Need help for reliable transliteration software

[Meenalochani]

Dear Rasikas,

I would be very thankful if members of the forum provide reliable transliteration software for converting Carnatic music lyrics from one language to another. Specifically, I am interested in translating Malayalam lyrics (the language and script I do not know) into Sanskrit lyrics. There are some sites providing transliteration are available when I searched on Google but I do not know how reliable or how safe they are to use. Mr ARUNK has created a wonderful transliteration software available on the web but the program translates only lyrics in English to other languages but not vice versa. Also please could someone tell me where to download Sanskrit and Tamil fonts safely on my Mac computer without virus problem? Thank you very much.

Meenalocahni

[Lakshman]

The Baraha program will probably do what you want to do but you will have to buy the program.

[Meenalochani]

Mr. Lakshman,

Thanks for your reply. Could you provide more information about Baraha program? Thanks.

Meenalochani

[vgovindan]

If you want to transliterate Malayalam lyrics into any other language, at least you should know Malayalam language. From your statement, I understand that you do not know Malayalam language. Then how is it possible for you to verify whether the result you got is correct or not - when the source itself is not clear?

btw, I can provide you any kind of support through the vb software I have developed for transliteration into all four South Indian Languages and Devanagari. Kindly send me a sample through email.

Also, I do not know Malayalam language script. Therefore, the input cannot be typed - it has to be pre-typed in Unicode as txt file (or .doc file) and not pdf of picture file.

[vasanthakokilam]

Also, try this: http://arunk.freepgs.com/cmtranslit/editor.php

This is the online transliteration software written by our member Arun

[Meenalochani]

Mr.vgovindan,

Thanks for your kind reply. Here is what I want. Suppose I have a audio of a Swathi Tirunal song "Sarasaksha" in Pantuvarali and I want to sing the song with the correct pronunciation. I can get the lyrics for the song from the SwathiTirunal website written in Malayalam. I am therefore looking for a program to change the lyrics in Malayalam for the song to the lyrics in Sanskrit which I can read. This will be helpful when I hear the audio of the song and help my rendering of the song.
I would like to send you a sample through e-mail. But I may have a problem with that. I use the Word on Mac computer and I have tried copying lyrics in other languages and pasting in Word and it is all gibberish. Are there reliable websites from which I could download fonts for different languages in my Word? Any suggestions will be helpful. Also I am delighted to know that you have developed a transliteration software for many languages. Is it available for everyone?

Thank you very much.

Meenlochani

[vgovindan]

Meenalochani,
Please give me the link of Swathi Thirunal website from where I can directly download the lyrics without going through your email.
I am not familiar with Mac but according to my daughter who uses Mac, Word document produced by Mac is compatible with MS Word which I use.
As regards font, Microsoft provides complete Unicode font in its Windows software. I assume that the same is true of Mac also. But I would suggest that you do not use any font for languages which are not Unicode compatible. Otherwise, compatibility problems might arise when working in internet.
As regards my software, it is available for free distribution but, I have not developed proper documentation for the same. If your problem could be solved using my software, I have no hesitation in sending the software to you provided the version of vb (non-object version) is supported by Mac. I do not know whether the object file created from vb can be used in Mac. This is a major hurdle between these two major OS.

[Pratyaksham Bala]

Meenalochani:

For 'sArasAkSa' kriti in Sanskrit, please check page 26 of this link which gives Swati Tirunal compositions in Sanskrit font !

https://archive.org/details/SwathiThirunalCompositions

[cheens]

You should probably be trying NHM Writer. It supports multiple indian languages. If you are on Windows, very easy to enable the phonetic keyboard for any application that you are using.

http://software.nhm.in/products/writer

Other than that, if you are on chrome, you can add "Google Input Tools". That supports phonetic keyboard for most of the indian languages.

Baraha is another very good option. But, I have not used much. It is the best for Kannada.

- Cheenu

[Meenalochani]

I am thrilled to receive replies for my question from Rasikas members and I thank you all for your suggestions.

Mr.vgovindan,

I am attaching the link to ST krithis (381 in number) in Malayalam as requested by you and I hope you can open the file. First of all let me thank you for your great website Thyagaraja-Vaibhavam from where I can get the lyrics for most of the Trimurthy songs in four languages. All I have to do is copy the lyrics (Sanskrit mailnly) and paste it in Word and they are fine. I thank you for that.

http://www.swathithirunal.in/linkfiles.htm

I have a number of PDF files of the compositions of Muthiah bhagavathar, Sadashiva Brahmendra, Jayadeva etc. as PDf files. The problem is I cannot choose the song I like and paste it on Word. If I do that all I see is some scrambles text that is not what I want. On my Word I have the built in Fonts like Arial Unicode MS, Devanagari MN, Gurumukhi MN, Tamil MN etc. but they are not doing anything helpful. I do not like the method of taking a snapshot of the song from the PDF file and save it.

Thank you very much for offering to give your software free for my use. Please send me the software and I will definitely try it and see if it works on Mac. I will send you and e-mail if you require that to send me the software.

Mr.Pratyaksham Bala,

Thank you very much for your link to ST krithis. I already have the file with me and the file has lyrics for a lot of ST krithis. Again, I am not able to choose a song and copy and paste it on Word. So again there is this font problem that Word cannot handle.

Cheenu,

Thanks for your suggestions. I use Firefox and not Chrome. I will try "Google Input tools" and try how it works.

Once again, thank you all for providing some helpful suggestions.

Meenalochani.

[vgovindan]

Meenalochani,
I checked the website and viewed the source code. The kRtis are pictures (.jpg) which cannot be used as input for any purpose unless we transcribe it manually. Alternatively there should be a picture reader which is available only for Sanskrit. In any case, I have found it more cumbersome to use picture reader which involves a lot of corrections.

In order to use the Malayalam version as in input, it should be in Unicode font. If you find such a website, please let me know. I shall also try to search for the same.

[srkris]

I've found Aksharamukha to do the job very well -- http://www.virtualvinodh.com/wp/aksharamukha/

[Meenalochani]

Srkris,

Thank you very much for the link. I am looking forward to using it. Only problem I have is that copying lyrics from the source file into the transliteration software does not paste coorectly (gets into funny characters). I need help for that.

[vgovindan]

Meenalochani,
Please see the image. I typed in Devanagari and got it converted to Tamil. The input - whether you type or paste - should be in Unicode - it cannot be an image file. You are getting garbage because you are pasting an image.
Please also see your email where the image has been sent.

[Meenalochani]

Mr. Vgovindan,

Thanks for your message. Very well done by the software. Could you explain the term Unicode? What if I do not find the original file in Unicode? Could you explain?

Thanks.

Meenalochani

[vgovindan]

Please refer to following websites -
Unicode.org - http://www.unicode.org/
Unicode Fonts for Mac - http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts_mac.html