Transliteration System for English to Sinhala
Machine Translation
B. Hettige1, A. S. Karunananda2
1
Department of Statistics and Computer Science, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayawardenepura,
Sri Lanka
2
Faculty of Information Technology, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
budditha@yahoo.com1 , asoka@itfac.mrt.ac.lk2
Abstract – Machine translation is a challenging task in natural
language processing. Out-Of-Vocabulary, handling Proper
nouns and Technical terms are some major issues which are
common to all machine translation systems. This paper
presents a transliteration approach to machine translation
from English to Sinhala. We have used Finite State
Automaton to develop transducers for English to Sinhala
transliteration. This approach can transliterate the text in
original English and Sinhala words that are written using
English letters. The transliteration System has been
developed using SWI-PROLOG and Prolog Server Page
(PSP). English WorldNet and Sinhala Chatbot are used to test
the transducers and reasonable results were achieved.
I INTRODUCTION
Machine translation has been a potential solution for
giving access to the world knowledge available in English
for those who have different mother tongues. There are
number of Machine Translation (MT) systems, available for
many languages. Among others, Electronic Dictionary
Research (EDR) [27] is the most powerful MT System in
the Asian region. EDR system translates English to
Japanese and vise versa. Also it uses knowledge base
Machine Translation approach. In the Asian region,
numbers of MT Systems are developed to Translate English
to Indian family languages. Some of these systems can be
named as Anglabharati, Anusaaraka, MaTra, Mantra etc.
[6]. Anglabharati MT System Translates English to Indian
languages, primarily Hindi, using a rule-based transfer
approach. The Anusaaraka MT System [3] is used to access
language between Indian Languages. Also this System uses
Paninian Grammar (PG) model [1] to it’s language analysis.
The Anusaaraka project has developed Language accesses
from Punjabi, Bengali, Telugu, Kannada and Marathi into
Hindi. The approach and lexicon is general, but the system
has mainly been applied for children’s stories. MaTra is a
Human-Assisted translation project for English to Indian
languages, and the Mantra project is based on the TAG
formalism, that has been developed for the domain of
gazette notifications pertaining to government appointments
[2].
The Machine Translation process can be described simply
as decoding the meaning of the source text, and re-encoding
this meaning in the target language [11]. Any MT System
contains source language morphological analyzer, source
language parser, translator, target language morphological
generator, target language composer and lexical databases
[8][9]. At present a number of approaches are used for
Machine Translation: Dictionary-based Machine
Translation, Statistical Machine Translation and Example-
based Machine Translation [25].
However, machine translation cannot be achieved merely
by handling languages at the morphological, syntax and
semantic levels. This is because; Out-Of-Vocabulary,
handling Proper nouns and Technical terms become crucial
when source and target languages are reasonably different
in terms of alphabet, pronunciation, etc. There are various
transliteration approaches taken to solve these issues.
In general, transliteration is the practice of transcribing a
word or text written in one writing system into another
writing system [25]. In other words, Machine transliteration
is a method for automatic conversion of words in one
language in to phonetically equivalent ones in another
language. For example, the English word ‘machine’ is
transliterated into Sinhala as ueIska. At present there are
number of Machine transliteration approaches available
namely, grapheme-based transliteration model, phoneme-
based transliteration model, hybrid transliteration model
and correspondence-based transliteration model [18].
Grapheme-based transliteration is direct orthographical
mapping from source graphemes to target graphemes.
Several transliteration methods have been proposed using
this method. These methods include channel model and
decision tree model [18]. Phoneme-based transliteration
model is based on pronunciation or the source phoneme
rather than spelling or source grapheme. This model uses
source-phoneme-to-source-phoneme transformation and
source- phoneme-to-target-phoneme transformation. By
using this transliteration model, Knight and others have
developed Japanese-to-English transliteration system with
weighted finite state transducers (WFSTs) [19]. Arabic-to-
English, English-to-Chinese Transliteration Systems too
have used this model. Hybrid and correspondence-based
Transliteration models are used both source grapheme and
source phoneme to transliteration.
Furthermore, there are two types of transliterations,
namely, Forward Transliteration and Backward
Transliteration. Forward Transliteration means
transliteration of a name from its native script to a foreign
one. Backward Transliteration is restoration of a previously TABLE I
The Sinhala Alphabet
transliterated name to its native scripts. However any
transliteration model can be modeled as phoneme-based Letter Type Sinhala Letters
transliteration, letter-based transliteration or substring-based Vowels
w, wd, we, wE, b, B, W, W! ,Ì, Ï iD, iDD, t, ta,
ft, T, ´, T!
transliteration. Among others, Weerasinghe and others have
l, L, . , >, V, Õ, p, P, c, Cv [, {, P, g,
developed a rule based Syllabification Algorithm, that can Consonants G, v, V, K, Ë, ; , : , o, O, k, |, m, M, n, N,
be considered under letter-based transliteration for Sinhala u, U, h, r, ,, j, Y, I, i, y, <, *
language [24]. This is a backward transliteration approach Semi-Consonants x, (
that reads Sinhala text and its pronunciation.
We present a transliteration approach that come under TABLE II
letter-based tradition with the use of theory of finite Sinhala Stokes and their positions
automaton. At this stage, this project has considered only No Stoke Name Position E.g.
the forward transliteration from English to Sinhala. 1 A Al-lakuna1 Upper ia
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II A Al-lakuna2 Upper ¾
describes structures of the Sinhala and English words. 2 d Aela-pilla Right ld
Section III reports on the design and implementation of the 3 e Ketti aeda pilla Right le
proposed transliteration models for English to Sinhala 4 E Diga aeda pilla Right lE
machine translation. Section IV gives conclusion and 5 s Ketti is pilla Upper ls
further work. S lS
6 Diga is pilla Upper
7 Q Ketti paa pilla1 Lower nq
= Ketti paa pilla2 Lower l=
II THE SINHALA AND ENGLISH LANGUAGES Q nQ
8 Diga paa pilla1 Lower
STRUCTURES + l+
Diga paa pilla1 Lower
Machine transliteration process is not a simple task. This 9 D Gaetta pilla Right iD
is mainly because; there are many ambiguities about the 10 f Kombuva Left fu
relationship between the spelling of a word and its 11 ! Gayanukitta Right T!
pronunciation. Further, some letters cannot be pronounced
in isolation, but need to be considered as adjacent letters.
Therefore, it is required to do word level analysis of words TABLE III
before going into transliteration approaches. The consonant ‘l’ with vocalic stokes

A Structure of Sinhala words No Character Letter

1 la la
Sinhala Language is constitutionally – recognized as the 2 la +w l
official language of Sri Lanka, along with Tamil. Sinhala 3 la + wd ld
has its own writing system, which is an offspring of the 4 la + we le
Brahmi script [25]. Maldives, Dhivehi are the closest 5 la + wE lE
relative languages for Sinhala. However, Sinhala differs 6 la +b ls
from all other Indo-Aryan languages. In that, it contains a 7 la +B lS
pair of vowel sounds that are unique to it, such as short 8 la +W l=
9 la + W! l+
vowel: ‘we’ – ae and Long vowel: ‘wE’ – aae[21]. Also
10 la + iD lD
Sinhala contains a set of five nasal sounds known as “half 11 la + iDD lDD
nasal” or “prenasalized stops”. These sounds as represented 12 la +t fl
in modern Sinhala writing and their romanised notation are 13 la + ta fla
as follows: Õa (nng), `ca (ndj), `â (nnd), |a (nd), ò(mb). The 14 la + ft ffl
Sinhala alphabet consists of 61 letters comprising 18 15 la +T fld
vowels, 41 consonants and 2 semi-consonants [5][17]. 16 la +´ flda
These symbols represent 40 sounds: 14 vowel sounds and 17 la + T! fl!
26 consonant sounds. This is quite similar to other Indic
alphabets, as all of them appear to be offshoots of the
Sanskrit alphabet. Table I shows the Sinhala alphabet. B. Structure of English words
Furthermore, some graphical symbols, stokes, are used in English is the dominant international language in
conjunction with consonants. They are used in writing some communications, science, business, aviation,
vowels too (example. wd" ta" ft). Unlike in English, a stoke entertainment, and diplomacy and also on the Internet.
may be positioned at any of the four side of the base letter. English contains 26 letters with 5 vowels [12][25]. English
Table II shows Sinhala stokes and their positions. Note that, is a stress-timed language, for example its certain syllables,
Sinhala letters (characters) are generated using Vowels,
in each multi-syllabic word, it gets a relative prominence /
consonants and conjunction with consonant and stokes.
Table III shows Combination of the consonant l (k) with loudness during pronunciation while the others do not [25].
vocalic stokes. Furthermore, English grammar displays minimal inflection
compared with most other Indo-European languages. And
English has an extraordinarily rich vocabulary and TABLE V
IPA Chart for English Consonants
willingness to absorb new words.
IPA English Sinhala Examples
P p ma pen, spin, tip
B Phonetic Relation between English and Sinhala B b í but, web
Developing the English to Sinhala transliteration system, T t Ü two, sting, bet
is such a complex task, because of the language structure. D d â do, odd
tʃ ch, t É chair, nature, teach
Some major differences of these two languages are given
dʒ d,j,dge ca gin, joy, edge
bellow: These two languages are fundamentally different
K c,k,q,ck la cat, kill, skin, queen, thick
from each other. Compared with Sinhala language There g .a go, get, beg
ɡ
are no stokes in English language. Spoken and written F f,gh *a fool, enough, leaf
English are equivalent. But there is a difference between V v, ve õ voice, have
written and spoken Sinhala language. Also Diphthongs are Θ th ;a thing, teeth
not used in written Sinhala language [17]. Ð th, the oa this, breathe, father
S s, c, ss i see, city, pass
Transliteration system requires direct phonetic relation
Z z , se i zoo, rose
between source language and target language. Compared to ʃ sh, s, ti I she, sure, emotion, leash
English and Sinhala alphabet, there are some ʒ s, ge i pleasure, beige
disambiguation. H h ya ham
• Two English sounds ‘^’ and ‘ə’ is represented in one M m ï man, ham
Sinhala letter ‘a’ (w) N n ka no, tin
Ŋ ng x singer, ring
• There are two Sounds in English International L l, ll , left, bell
phonetic alphabet (IPA) ‘I’ and ‘i’ for English but ɹ r r run, very
Sinhala uses one ‘e’ (b) for above both two sounds. W j j we
J y h yes
• No Diphthongs are used in Sinhala Language. j j what
ʍ
Therefore these sound representations have some
difficulties.
TABLE VI
• Two sounds ‘v’ and ‘w’ are represented in one IPA Chart for English Diphthongs
Sinhalese letter ‘w’ (j)
IPA English Sinhala Examples
• No Direct Sound for English Letters q, x, z in Sinhala eɪ ay, ai tb day, pain
Also large numbers of irregular word pronunciations are aɪ y, ai wb my, wise
difficult. Table IV shows IPA chart for English language ɔ ɪ oy Tb boy
that contains Phonetic Vowel sounds with appropriate əʊ ow TW no, tow
Sinhala sounds. aʊ ow weW now
ɪ ə ear, ere bw near, here
TABLE IV ɛ ə air, ere wbw hair, there
IPA Chart for English Vowels
ʊ ə our weWw tour
IPA English Sinhala Examples juː u Wb pupil
English
a: a wd father
i b sit
Furthermore as certain Sinhala letters such as ‘Sanyaka
ɪ
ɪ y b city gayanna’, ‘Sanyaka dayanna’ etc are unique to Sinhala, do
i: ee B see not participate for English to Sinhala transliteration.
ɛ e t bed However, Sinhala letters can be written by using English
ε: ir ta bird letters with help of English alphabet [4][21]. These types
æ a we lad, cat, ran of English text are also needed to Transliteration.
ʌ u, ou w (jsjD;) run, enough
ɒ o, a T not, wasp
ɔ : aw, au ´ law, caught III DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION
ʊ u, oo W put, wood
uː oo, ou W! soon, through In developing English to Sinhala Transliteration System
ə a w(ixjD;) about two types of English texts must be considered. The first
ə er w(ixjD;) winner type is the one with the original English words such as
London, while the second type is the text with Sinhala
Table V shows IPA Chart for English Consonant letters words which are written using English letters, e.g.
that contains Phonetic consonant sounds with appropriate Colombo. Therefore, two types of transliteration models
Sinhala sounds. Table VI shows IPA Chart for English are to be developed. Before proposing our approach to
Diphthongs letters that contains Phonetic sounds with transliteration, let us discuss how transliterations are
appropriate Sinhala sounds. handled by English to Sinhala dictionaries.
 A Current approches to English to Sinhala B Proposed Approach to English to Sinhala
Transliteration Transliteration
Dictionary writers have used numbers of methods for We have proposed two English to Sinhala transliteration
English to Sinhala transliteration. All these methods can be models as per original English text (Type 1) and Sinhala
grouped into two classes, namely, phonetic-based words written using English letters (Type 2). Fig. 1 and 2
transliteration method and non-phonetic-based shows the Finite Sate Transducers (FST) for vowels and
transliteration method. The Phonetic-based transliterations consonants respectively, for Type 1 of transliteration. This
are based on International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) sounds. transducer can identify any English word such as ‘father’.
There are several English Sinhala dictionaries in common FSTs of this nature have already been developed for
use. They are Malalsekara English to Sinhala English language by many people.
Dictionary[14], Godage English Sinhala Tamil Dictionary As our major contribution, we have developed
[23], Rathna English Sinhala Dictionary [13], Maitipe's transducers (Type 2). Fig 3 and 4 shows finite state
Sinhala-English Pocket Dictionary [15] and Wasana Transducers for vowels and consonants as per the Type 2
English-Sinhala Dictionary [16]. Malasekera English- transliteration. FST for Type 2 transliterations are
Sinhala dictionary uses an IPA based model. Its considerably different from those of Type 1. This is
transliteration is based on the Oxford English Dictionary – because, writing Sinhala using English letters, requires
new major edition. Malalasekara dictionary uses some of specific combinations of English words as shown in Table
the following notations; ‘a[open]’(^) as ‘D’ , a[close] (ə) as VIII below.
‘w’ and a[close-long] (ə:) as ‘DD’ . And there is one Sinhala TABLE VIII
vowel ‘b’ to represent the two English vowels ‘I’ and ‘i’. Sinhala Transliteration Alphabet
Also they use Sinhala letters to implement English
Sinhala Eng Sinhala Eng Sinhala Eng
diphthong s such as my = ^I wb, day eI tb etc. w a X nga M pa
Malalasekera dictionary uses English letter v and w as ‘j’, wd aa Õ nnga M pha
z is repersent as iaz or zia and x is represented as la laia or we ae p ca N ba
z. wE aee P cha N bha
b i c ja U ma
Rathna English Sinhala Dictionary uses another method B ii CO jha U mba
but it is closely related to the Malalasekera Dictionary’s W u [ nya H ya
methods. Some of these notations are as follows; W! uu { jnya R ra
a[open]’(^) as ‘w’ , a[close] (ə) as ‘[D]’ and a[close-long] Ì Ị `P ndja , la
Ï Ị g tta j va
(ə:) as ‘[D:]’ . Rathna dictionary uses [D] sign after the letter iD ŗ G ttha Y sha
to any sound that is pronounced as a closed sound. iDD ŗ v daa I ssa
Godage English-Sinhala-Tamil dictionary uses a different T e V daha i sa
method to represent these transliterations. This dictionary Ta ee K nna y ha
Ft ai ~ nnda < lla
has not used Phonetic model and it represents the same T o ; ta * fa
letter ‘w’ for all sounds related for the ‘a’ such as ‘^’, ‘ə’ ´ oo : tha > gha
and ‘ə:’. This methods is simple than that of Malalasekara T! au o da | nda
and Rathna dictionary’s method. Table VII shows a L ka O dha . ga
comparison of different transliteration approaches given L kha k na
above.
i V1
TABLE VII r
Different transliteration approaches V2
English Malalasekara Rathna Godage
e e, r
Aback Tnela a, e, i, o, u, y
D’nela w[D]nela A B
Binocular nb’fkdlahq,aD Ìfk[d]lHq,[¾] nhsfkdlahq,¾
a w, u
Quota laõDWÜD Lafjdag Lafjdagd V3
Volcono fjd,a’flbkaDW fj[d],,aflafkda fjd,aflafkda
o V4 o, u
xenophobia ’fizkaD*aDWì fi[z]k[d]f*daìh fifkdaf*daìwd
Zero ’iazbD¾DW [z]iSfrda Isfrda
Fig. 1 FST for Vowels in Types 1 transliteration

It appears that, the transliteration method proposed in
Godage dictionary is very readable, among others. Hence,
our transliteration system has used this method for
Transliteration.
Using Type 2 transliteration, a Sinhala proper noun such
as ‘Dambadeniya’ (oUfoksh) can be recognized. In this
example, it should be noted that the English letters ‘mba’
are transliterated as U in Sinhala. This is why we cannot
use Type 1 transliteration for the Sinhala words written
using in English letters.
 D1 C Implementation
C1 g
e In order to develop English to Sinhala full transliteration
C2
c
k system, we must implement both Type1 and Type 2 FSTs.
d C3 In a typical English to Sinhala machine translation system,
e e
C4 the transliteration comes after recognition of proper noun,
v e out of vocabulary words and technical terms by applying
C5
t, e, s,c ,g h English morphological analyzer and English dictionary. As
C D
such the transliteration system becomes a plug-in for a
q0 standard machine translation system. This Plug in
t implements two major tasks, namely, string manipulation
C6
D2 e and applying Type 1 and Type 2 transliterations. During
h string manipulation the tasks such as changing case,
n C7 g
Figure 1
converting letters in English words into a list, and
C8 generating a strings of characters. This English character
l
q0 = {b,c,d,f,g,h,j,k,l,m,n,p,q,r,s,t,v,w,x,y,z} string will be sent to FST implementation of Type 1 and
Types 2 transliterations.
Fig. 2 FST for Consonants in Types 1 transliteration
We have used SWI-PROLOG [26] and PSP to
implement the proposed transliteration approach into
V1
English to Sinhala Machine translation system.
I I
r
V2
r
e e D Appraoch in Practice
D1
The whole transliteration Process can be described as
V3
a Q2 follows. Having accepted an English word, first, the
A B system removes capitalization and gets a lowercase text
Q1 and generates Atom list in Prolog [20]. After that, finite
V4
i state transducer is used, together with information Table
i
e VII and returns appropriate Sinhala vowels and
e
V5 consonants. Then Phonetic font layout (Table III) is used
u to store this information. In the phonetic layout, letters are
u V6
stored using base letter and its vowel sound. For example
o V7 o, u letter ‘fld’ (koo) is stored as letter ‘la’(k) and vowel ‘T’
(o) This method is used to generate Sinhala letters, such as
Q1 = { a, e, ,i, o, u, Ǐ, ŕ }, Q2 = { a, e, i }
j + s = ú , u + a = ï etc. The Finite State Transducer
Fig. 3 FST for Consonants in Types 2 transliteration (FST) contains approximately hundred of ‘arcs’ to
represent above models. Fig 6 shows how our approach
C7 transliterate a proper noun ‘Saman Kumara’ .
b
Figure 3 i
C1
l
C2 s
l
s h
t D1
C3
t t
C
Q1
C4
Q2 h
d C5 d
D2 h
n d
C6 n, d, y
n d, j
D3 j
d D4
Fig. 5 English to Sinhala Transliteration System
Q1 = { k, g, c, j, t d ,b, m, y, r, f, v, s, h, l, n, p }
Q2 = { k, g, c, j, t, d, b, s, p} We have also linked up the transliteration system with our
Sinhala Chatbot [10]. Additionally, people, who do not
Fig. 4 FST for Consonants in Types 2 transliteration
fluent in Sinhala typing [7], but good in English typing,
can communicate with the Sinhala Chatbot.
IV CONCLUSION AND FURTHER WORK
Our objective of this project was to develop a
transliteration model that can enhance the usage of our
English to Sinhala Machine Translation system. In
achieving this, we have developed two FST based models
(Type 1 and Type 2) for implementing transliteration of
pronoun, out of dictionary words and technical terms. The
Type 1 model was tested by using famous WordNet [22].
Type 2 model was tested by using Sinhala Chatbot. The
results of these experiments were very encouraging.
However, we have also identified the following as the
main limitations. Handeling of Pronunciations of a
English word is a critical problem in English to Sinhala
transliteration. For example, the English letter ‘a’
represent different sound ‘w’, ‘we’ and ‘wE’ (ago – wf.da,
America – wefursld and ant- wEkaá) in Sinhala. This
causes to leave some ambiguity in transliteration. At
present, though we can tackle this issue by showing the
English word next to transliterated word, we intend to
tackle the issue by incorporating English IPA into our
system. This will be a further work.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank Dr. Neranjan Bandara from the
Department of Sinhala and Pali Bauddha, University of Sri
Jayawerdenepura, for his greate support to solve some
Linguistic problems.
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