One of the most frequently asked question I encounter is:
Is there (free) English – Tamil translation software for download / online / offline?
The sad answer is NO.
There are some long running machine based translation research projects at Universities. But none have given usable product yet. Google offers translation services for Hindi. They also give a translation toolkit that can be used for any language. Right now it’s efficiency for Tamil translation is very rudimentary. It is supposed to get better when more users use it.
Google says that it can bring automatic machine based translation for Tamil too, if it can get millions of pages of documents with English and Tamil translation side by side. One place where such translated documents may reside with the legal department of the country. It’s in the Government’s hands to give them for public research if not to a private company like Google.
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I think there are such side-by-side translated documents in many Sri Lankan government website. But only problem in the are all scattered around many sites.