Browsing by Author "Ranasingha, R. A. W. T."

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A Linguistic Study on Sinhalese Neologism Related to COVID-19 with Special Reference to The Trilingual Dictionary Published by Department of Official Languages, Sri Lanka
(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, 2021) Ranasingha, R. A. W. T.
In late 2019, the respiratory infection known as COVID-19 spread around the world as a global public health hazard. The epidemic has a profound effect on social, economic, scientific, and linguistic differences. It is a fact that the lexicons of all languages are improving day by day. Accordingly, new terms emerged globally during the COVID-19 outbreak. In this regard, many researchers use the term “neologism,” which means the coinage of new words. Neologism plays a significant role throughout the epidemics. Thus, many new words have come into use in the Sinhalese language in the face of the epidemic, yet those words have not been included in the Sinhala-English language dictionaries, and this fact was identified as the research problem. The objective of this study was to identify the creation of new terms and reuse of existing terms in the Sinhala language related to the outbreak of COVID-19, which are not included in the Trilingual dictionary published by the Department of Official Languages—Sri Lanka. Data was collected through selected government notices, articles, social media, and selected government websites published from March 2020 to May 2021. Thus, the collected data were analyzed using the aforementioned dictionary, and new terms that were not included in it were identified. The findings of the study revealed that those terms could be analyzed based on the three components of neologism: word formation, borrowing, and lexical deviation. Furthermore, it was discovered that word formation is utilized in the form of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. The broader purpose of this study was to identify new terms that were added to the Sinhala language during the epidemic. Moreover, this study attempts to emphasize that those terms should be included as Sinhala headwords in the aforementioned Trilingual dictionary. This study will assist in writing and translating documents related to COVID-19 at present as well as in studying the history of this epidemic in the future.
A Study on the Difficulties Encountered by Trainee Translators when Translating Psychology Related Terms from English to Sinhala with Special Reference to Mental Disorders
(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, 2021) Kannangara, K. K. D. T. I.; Munasinghe, A. M. N. K.; Ranasingha, R. A. W. T.
Translation, the process of transferring texts from one language to another, can be assumed as a pivotal tool of communication. Specialized translation, a major category under domain-based translation, plays a significant role in producing translations relevant to specific fields such as the economy, history, and psychology. In particular, when translating documents related to mental disorders under psychology, which is categorized under scientific translation, a number of difficulties are often encountered by trainee translators, and that very fact was identified as the research problem. Thereby, this study aimed at discovering the difficulties encountered by trainee translators when translating psychology related terms from English to Sinhala, with special reference to mental disorders, and providing feasible solutions for them respectively. In order to gather data, a qualitative methodology was utilized. Thirty common words related to mental disorders were given to fifteen undergraduates who follow Translation Studies at the University of Kelaniya. It could be observed that the main difficulty occurred in translating psychological terms was not having the exact Sinhala term for the English term and that the confusion was raised when translating terms due to a lack of knowledge in psychology. However, they had employed diverse methods to translate them. Apparently, a majority of English terms were translated by providing some lengthy descriptions in Sinhala. A few words among them were translated into Sinhala by borrowing them from English. In addition, a handful of words had their own equivalences in Sinhala. Thus, it was evident that exploring exact Sinhala terms for the terminology related to mental disorders is a challenging task except on a few occasions. As these terms are originally derived from English, either providing descriptions or loan words remain as the other alternatives. A background knowledge on this specific area is also required to make the process of translation a success.