eSwabhimani award for trilingual speaking dictionary by SALA

A trilingual speaking dictionary that supports all three national languages – Sinhala, Tamil, and English – launched by SALA Enterprises was recognised with the National Best E-Content Award in the e-Inclusion and Participation category at the recently-concluded eSwabhimani Awards.

According to SALA Enterprises Managing Director Chinthaka Wijewickrama, the great potential in developing and bridging the gap between languages by introducing the trilingual speaking dictionary widely known as the ‘Language Companion’ was explored by his company to support the multicultural and multilingual society in Sri Lanka.

“This unit has made a significant impact to many users in communicating with other races and bridging the communication barrier and bringing about national harmony. Therefore, in order to minimise the hassle and expense, we introduced this compact, portable pocket sized unit, which speaks the preferred language with the correct pronunciation,” he said.

“The ‘Language Companion’ is a speaking Sinhala, Tamil and English electronic trilingual dictionary. This is the first time such a speaking dictionary has been introduced to Sri Lanka. This speaking dictionary can provide a vital platform for language learning. We have already added the over 70,000 Sinhala words to the Sinhala dictionary database and it carries the prestigious Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Thesaurus  and the popular Comet  Tamil Dictionary,” he added.

Apart from these features, this unit has features that could improve grammar usage, pronunciation and accent with English, Sinhala, and Tamil lessons specially designed by professional language teachers.  Adjustable audio speed assists in clear, articulate intonation of words in all three languages.

The ‘Language Companion’ is a Sinhala Tamil, English translator with a dictionary and thesaurus with voice. It has over one million translations from Sinhala to English and Tamil, Tamil to Sinhala and English and English to Sinhala and Tamil.

Some of the main features of this unit comprises of an adjustable audio speed to assist in pronunciation,  grammar learning designed by professional language teachers, English Oxford Dictionary with over 350,000 words, phrases, meanings and 11,000 encyclopaedic entries. It also consists of synonyms and antonyms with 35,000 example sentences.

The keyboard layout consists of the famous Wijesekara keyboard layout for Sinhala. The Tamil layout is of the Renganathan keyboard layout. The ‘Language Companion’ keyboard has been designed according to the comfort of the users giving space between each key for easy typing.  

Keeping in mind visibility, the screen consists of a backlit panel. This unit comes with a zoom in function as well. Some of the other features are a full functional calculator, metric converter, scientific calculator and formulas in physics, chemistry and mathematics.

In order to assist the user in pronunciation, a built in voice recorder has been incorporated. With future expansions in mind the unit has been designed with a memory card slot which can be increased to 8GB. This enables the user to store e-books and music or any other valuable information. For users who like music, this unit comes with a MP3 player and a voice recorder.