Singlish - Sinhala Unicode translator API in JAVA

     Hmmmm…. After a long time nuh… ;) My 2nd post… On this post I’m going to introduce a JAVA API for Singlish to Sinhala Unicode transliation or in other words an API to translate English typed sinhala text to Sinhala Unicode characters with a small application which build using the API.

     This code + API have some nice features to enhance the usability of this application. The API can use for applications that need to translate the user type english text into Sinhala Unicode at the editing place. To represent consonant modifiers you can use either uppercase letters or the same lowercase letters. User should use minus symbol to combine letters (බැඳි අකුරු), for example to type ක්‍ෂ letter k-SHA should use. “-“ will be ignored in the translated text and it may use to combine letter. But if user wants to type “-“ sign, then two minus letters should use as ”--”. Other features and corresponding English letters of the API has described in the user guide.

     You can get the java files from the links at the bottom. When considering about using these classes in applications, there are two main approaches to use them.

     So I’ll start from the easy way. You can directly add the Sinhala to English translation capability to your swing application’s text component, which inherited from JTextComponent by setting the document filter.

JEditorPane editor = new JEditorPane();

((AbstractDocument) editor.getDocument()).setDocumentFilter(new SinhalaTransliatorFilter());

There is another two possible ways translate.

You can directly translate text by using the static method translate, as

String str = SinhalaTranslator.translate("k K g G X gA ch CH j k-DH”);

     This method has some drawbacks, if you are using the above method you will have to keep the original english text separately and translate entire text as user editing the text. Then the next possible and efficent way is by creating an object of the SinhalaTranslator.

     In this case you can append, insert or delete text. Except to that, the entire translated text can be retrieved by calling to the getText method of the SihalaTranslator instance. Or the most recently translated text portion can be retrieved by using the getReplacedPosition, getReplacedLength and getTranslatedText methods. If you want to translate text at the editing place (Translate text at the same place, where user types, as in the demo application.), these methods will be useful. The reason is, when user typing text there is still a portion of text that hasn’t translated. So as user appends new characters, that non-translated part should also translate as necessary.

SinhalaTranslator trans = new SinhalaTranslator();

trans.appendText(“ae”);

trans.appendText(“eaa”);

String translated = trans.getText();//ඈaa

or

trans.appendText(“ae”);

String str = trans. getTranslatedText();//ae # case 1, replacedLength – 0,

// replacedPosition - 0

trans.appendText(“eaa”);

str = trans. getTranslatedText();// ඈaa # case 2, replacedLength – 2,

                                                 // replacedPosition - 0

     getReplacedPosition() returns the replaced position in the text, and the getReplacedLength() returns the number of chars that replaced in the original text by the most recent append, delete or insert operation.

     For future enhancements, I think we should add a feature to insert English text without translating. And there might be some bugs with text deleting. The following links contain class files and the help document.

     If there are any bugs or suggestions let me know. And on the next post I’m going to introduce a sinhala – sinhala unicode translation addon for firefox.  Mmmmmm, c ya all in next post…. Byee…….. :D

Singlish to sinhala translation code

Singlish to sinhala translator + jar

Singlish to sinhala translator user guide