I’m happy to announce a new Android app called “Manglish”, it’s an app to convert Malayalam text to Manglish. It’s a GNU GPL v3 licensed completely free software app with no ads thanks to the donors. Kept it as light as possible.
You can download & install it in many ways :
Updates
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2021 May: Version 7 released with new On Screen Button feature.
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2020 August: App has reached 5000 active installs.
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2019 November : App has reached 1000+ active installs and more than 3000 downloads !
Manglish
When Malayalam text is written with English letters, it’s called Manglish. Not to be confused with Malaysian pidgin language.
Manglish = Malayalam + English
For example, consider this Malayalam text :
എല്ലാവര്ക്കും സുഖമല്ലേ
The above Malayalam text will be written in Manglish as :
ellavarkkum sughamalle
Manglish text is used mostly in chatting, social media etc. It basically came into existence and became popular after internet. It’s an easy way to write Malayalam.
Malayalam is a bit complicated language. It has 52 letters including 16 vowels and 36 consonants. So fitting all of them in a small sized Phone keyboard is hard and to type it more harder.
This persuades people to use manglish instead. There are apps & keyboards available to convert manglish to Malayalam. This helps everyone to easily type Malayalam.
Why Manglish App ?
I know people who are malayalees, can understand Malayalam, but can’t read. There are many such people. Malayalees are everywhere in the world. Most of us are expats. So the kids brought up are most likely to not get a good education in their native language Malayalam.
I have some cousins too like this. They speak excellent Malayalam, but can’t even read a letter. There are such students in my college too. Well, this app would help them all ❤️.
I’ve made this app for such people to easily understand malayalam text without depending on someone else. All you have to do is paste the text, click a button and voila !
- Help people understand Malayalam text they see/receive
- Potentially help people learn the language
Now you can understand what your WhatsApp ammavan forwards. :P 😝
Features
- Fast, quick conversion
- Ability to select text in other apps, browsers and share to this app to convert
- No ads, bloatware
- As lightweight as possible
- NEW May 2021: On Screen button to transliterate text on any app
On Screen Button
Version 7 introduces a new feature: A “മ” button that floats on screen. When clicked, it will convert Malayalam text on screen to Manglish.
To enable this feature, a special permission is needed. You will need to explicitly give this permission in Android Settings -> Accessibility. How this feature works is explained in technical section below.
Contribute
Donate
The app is and will always be free of ads. It was made for the sole intend of helping people. If you can, you may help financially in the development of this app.
Donors
Thank you so much to these donors who helps keep the app ad-free and help me maintain the app.
- Athul Cyriac
- Mathew Mani
- Pranoy Dev
Code
Read the technical section and contribute to the code !
Feature Request
You can submit a feature request in the comments below or on our GitHub issues.
Screenshots
Technical
ml2en
The app uses ml2en library made by Kailash Nadh. It’s the brain behind the conversion. This library is also used by a reddit and twitter bot to help in translation. But those require a server to run and is not reliable forever. This app solves that problem.
A web app is also available for ml2en. ml2en is licensed under GNU GPL v2.0.
ml2en’s not perfect, but is enough.
App
The JavaScript version of ml2en.js is used by the app. Mozilla’s Java implementation of JavaScript, Rhino is used to run this JS file. Yes, it’s not efficient. Instead, a native Java implementation of the ml2en algorithm would be the best. I tried to do it, but failed because of my inexperience with Java.
UPDATE July 2019: This issue has been fixed. I made a Java port of the ml2en algorithm.
On Screen Button
The On Screen button feature works using Android’s Accessibility API. You may have seen people with vision impairment using screen readers for using phone. Such screen reader apps use this API to get data from apps and read it out aloud. Similarly, Manglish app gets text from screen and make an On Screen box on it with the converted text.
This was challenging because some apps like Facebook & Instagram uses special TextView elements for displaying text. I couldn’t solve the issue with Facebook app. But for every other app it works.
I hope this app has been helpful. Please do let me know your feedback :)
And rate it on Play Store !