Looking for expert Sinhala translation services? Since 2003, Green Crescent has been delivering professional translation services between English and Sinhala to clients worldwide. We specialize in areas such as legal, cultural, educational, and business sectors. Our team ensures accurate, high-quality translations tailored to your specific needs. Get a fast, free Sinhala translation quote today!
Our Comprehensive Sinhala Translation Services
Green Crescent’s skilled team of Sinhala translators includes subject matter experts for various industries. We provide translations tailored to the standard form of Sinhala, which is based on the dialect spoken in the southwestern region of Sri Lanka. The Sinhala language, also commonly referred to as Sinhalese, is written in the unique Sinhala script.
We specialize in both English to Sinhala and Sinhala to English translations, offering the following services:
Simple Translation
Our simple translations in the English/Sinhala language pair are designed for basic communication needs. These translations are completed by a single Sinhala translator without the involvement of an editor or proofreader, making them suitable for informal communication or understanding the general meaning of a text. Simple translations are ideal for personal correspondence, casual reading, or early drafts, but they are not recommended for professional or formal use without further revision.
Standard Translation (TEP)
Our Standard Sinhala Translation service offers high-quality translations for everyday use, such as business correspondence, websites, reports, and presentations. This service includes translation, editing, and proofreading (TEP) to ensure that your Sinhala documents are accurate, fluent, and professional. It is the best choice for documents that require precision and clarity.
Organization Critical Translation (TEP+)
Our Organization Critical Sinhala Translation service is ideal for sensitive or technical documents where accuracy is essential, such as legal contracts, technical manuals, or medical documents. These translations undergo multiple rounds of proofreading by expert linguists, with input from subject matter experts (SMEs) when necessary, ensuring the translation is both technically accurate and contextually appropriate.
Bilingual Editing
Our Bilingual Editing service ensures that your Sinhala translation accurately reflects the source text while maintaining clarity and fluency. The editor compares both the original and translated texts to ensure consistency, accuracy, and cultural relevance. This service is particularly useful for business, legal, or academic documents where precision is key.
Proofreading
Our proofreading service for Sinhala translations focuses on correcting surface-level errors such as grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. This service is typically the final step before finalizing a translation for publication or submission, ensuring that the document is polished and ready for professional use. We also offer proofreading as a standalone service for translations that have already been completed.
Legal Translation
Green Crescent provides expert legal translation services for Sinhala, handling a wide range of documents, including contracts, court documents, and official certificates. Our legal translators are experienced in Sinhala legal terminology and ensure that your documents are translated with the highest level of accuracy, suitable for submission to legal entities and government bodies.
Technical Translation
Technical translations in Sinhala require expertise in specialized fields such as IT, engineering, and science. Our technical translators and subject matter experts ensure that industry-specific terminology is accurately translated and that the meaning is preserved, even for the most complex content. This service is ideal for technical manuals, engineering documents, and scientific reports.
Medical Translation
Our medical translation services in Sinhala are designed for translating medical reports, clinical trial documents, pharmaceutical information, and other health-related content. We ensure that medical terminology is accurately translated and that all documents adhere to regulatory standards. Our translators have experience working with sensitive medical content to ensure high levels of accuracy and confidentiality.
Localization
Our localization services for Sinhala ensure that your content is culturally adapted and linguistically accurate for Sinhala-speaking audiences. Whether it's marketing materials, software, or websites, we tailor your translations to resonate with the cultural and linguistic nuances of the Sinhala-speaking population.
Website, App, and Software Localization for Sinhala
We offer comprehensive website, app, and software localization services for Sinhala-speaking users. This includes translating text, adapting user interfaces, and ensuring that your software or application is optimized for Sinhala-speaking regions. Whether for mobile apps or desktop software, our localization services ensure that your digital content is accessible and relevant to your target audience.
Back-translation
Back-translation is a quality assurance process where we translate the Sinhala text back into the original source language to ensure accuracy and consistency. This service is particularly useful for legal, medical, and technical documents where precision is critical. Back-translation helps ensure that the intended meaning is fully preserved in the final translation.
Peer Review
Our Peer Review service for Sinhala translations involves an independent linguist reviewing the translation for accuracy, consistency, and adherence to stylistic guidelines. This additional layer of quality control ensures that your translation is error-free and meets the highest standards of linguistic quality.
SME Review
Subject Matter Expert (SME) review is essential for specialized Sinhala translations in fields such as law, medicine, engineering, or technology. Our SMEs work closely with the translation team to ensure that technical terminology is accurately translated and contextually appropriate. This service is particularly useful for complex documents that require expert knowledge.
Transcreation
Our Sinhala Transcreation service goes beyond literal translation to creatively adapt your content for the Sinhala-speaking audience. Whether it's for marketing, advertising, or branding, we ensure that your messages are not only accurately translated but also culturally engaging and resonant with the target audience, preserving the original intent and emotional impact.
MTPE-Full (Machine Translation Post-Editing - Full)
MTPE-Full (Machine Translation Post-Editing - Full) involves a detailed review of machine-translated content between Sinhala and English. This service ensures that the final translation is accurate, fluent, and meets high-quality linguistic standards. MTPE-Full is suitable for business-critical documents or any content requiring a polished, professional result.
MTPE-Light (Machine Translation Post-Editing - Light)
MTPE-Light (Machine Translation Post-Editing - Light) is a quicker, more cost-effective service where our editors focus on fixing major errors in machine-translated text. While it may not reach the level of polish as MTPE-Full, it ensures that the translation is clear and understandable, making it suitable for internal documents or content where full linguistic accuracy is not required.
Additional Language Services and Options for Sinhala
Certified Translation
Green Crescent provides certified translations of official documents, including birth, marriage, and death certificates, diplomas, passports, and legal documents in both Sinhala and English. Our certified translations are accepted by government agencies, legal bodies, and educational institutions.
Rush Service
We offer rush translation services for Sinhala documents when fast delivery is essential. While we strive to maintain quality, expedited services may come with trade-offs in pricing and consistency. Please consult with a project manager to discuss the details of your request.
Discounts
Volume discounts are available for large projects, long-term clients, and organizations such as non-profits, NGOs, charities, and government entities.
Minimum Fee
There is a minimum project fee of $75.00 USD per language, which can be reduced or waived for regular clients or special projects.
Additional Language Services
In addition to translation, Green Crescent offers other Sinhala language services, including interpretation, transcription, website design, and desktop publishing.
About the Sinhala Language
Sinhala, known locally as "සිංහල" (Siṁhala), is the official and national language of Sri Lanka, spoken by approximately 16 million people as a first language, with an additional 4 million speakers who use it as a second language. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family and has a long and rich history, being the language of Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese ethnic group. Sinhala plays a key role in government, education, media, and literature throughout the country.
The Cultural Context, History, and Linguistic Features of Sinhala
Sinhala has a deep cultural and historical significance in Sri Lanka, with written records dating back over 2,000 years. The earliest Sinhala literature is found in ancient Buddhist texts, reflecting the strong influence of Buddhism on the culture and language. Over the centuries, Sinhala has absorbed influences from Pali, Sanskrit, Tamil, Portuguese, Dutch, and English due to historical contact with various cultures and empires.
Linguistically, Sinhala is an inflected language, meaning that nouns, verbs, and adjectives change their form to indicate grammatical relationships such as tense, number, and case. Sinhala also has a unique system of writing that developed from the Brahmi script, which was brought to the island from India. The modern Sinhala script is notable for its rounded shapes, a feature common among South Asian scripts.
The Writing System: Sinhala Script
Sinhala is written using its own script, known as the Sinhala script. This script is an abugida, meaning that each consonant has an inherent vowel sound, and additional vowel sounds are indicated by diacritical marks. The script consists of 54 letters, including 18 vowels and 36 consonants, and is written from left to right.
Vowels and Consonants: Sinhala has a rich vowel system, including both short and long vowels, and a variety of consonants. The language also features a system of aspirated and unaspirated consonants, which can change the meaning of words.
Sinhala Alphabet
The Sinhala alphabet includes both vowels and consonants, with the following main characters:
- Vowels: අ (a), ආ (ā), ඉ (i), ඊ (ī), උ (u), ඌ (ū), එ (e), ඒ (ē), ඔ (o), ඕ (ō), ඓ (ai), ඖ (au), ඍ (ru), ඎ (rū)
- Consonants: ක (ka), ඛ (kha), ග (ga), ඝ (gha), ඞ (ṅa), ච (ca), ඡ (cha), ජ (ja), ඣ (jha), ඤ (ña), ට (ṭa), ඨ (ṭha), ඩ (ḍa), ඪ (ḍha), ණ (ṇa), ත (ta),ථ (tha), ද (da), ධ (dha), න (na), ප (pa), ඵ (pha), බ (ba), භ (bha), ම (ma), ය (ya), ර (ra), ල (la), ව (va), ශ (śa), ෂ (ṣa), ස (sa), හ (ha), ළ (ḷa)
Key Linguistic Differences Between Sinhala and English for Translation
When translating between Sinhala and English, several linguistic features must be considered:
Inflection and Grammatical Structure: Sinhala is an inflected language, meaning that nouns and verbs change their form based on tense, number, and case. English relies more heavily on word order and auxiliary verbs to express these relationships, so translators must adapt these features for clarity in English.
Word Order: Sinhala typically follows a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order, whereas English follows a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) structure. Translators must adjust sentence order while preserving meaning.
Vowel Length and Aspiration: Sinhala distinguishes between short and long vowels, and between aspirated and unaspirated consonants, which can affect meaning. English does not have these distinctions, so translators must carefully handle vowel and consonant length to maintain accuracy.
Loanwords and Multilingual Influence: Due to Sri Lanka's colonial history, Sinhala has absorbed many loanwords from Portuguese, Dutch, and English, especially in modern contexts like technology and governance. Translators must be familiar with these loanwords and their modern usage to ensure accurate translation.
Script and Transliteration: The Sinhala script is unique and contains characters not found in English. Translators must ensure that proper names and key terms are transliterated accurately, maintaining both meaning and pronunciation.
By addressing these linguistic and cultural nuances, Green Crescent ensures that translations between Sinhala and English are accurate, culturally sensitive, and reflective of the linguistic heritage of the Sinhala-speaking community.
An Insight into Sinhala Expression
This passage is from Pansiya Panas Jataka, a collection of stories about the previous lives of the Buddha. It is a significant work in Sinhala literature that offers deep insights into life, moral values, and the nature of human existence.
- Sinhala: "ආලෝකය වෙත යාම සඳහා, දෘඩාංගශීලයෙන් පිරි අභිප්රේරණය අවශ්යයි."
- English Translation: "To reach the light, one must be guided by unwavering determination."