A Sinhala-to-English dictionary edited by Dr Somapala Jayawardhana, who compiled it at the request of the publisher Sirisumana Godage. It carries its Sinhala title, Sinhala Ingrisi Shabdakoshaya, alongside the English one, and is held in the union catalogue of the National Library of Sri Lanka.
Jayawardhana set out his aim in his own preface: the dictionary was made to take account of contemporary Sinhala, by including new words and by recording new meanings that older words have acquired. That is the stated principle behind the work, and it distinguishes a dictionary built on current usage from one that simply reprints an inherited word list. The second part of the editor's brief was technical. Sinhala translations and original writing on science and technology have introduced a body of newer terms, and the dictionary supplies English equivalents for them.
Readers who work between the two languages — translators, students, writers, and anyone reading Sinhala material and needing to render it in English — are the people a volume of this kind is assembled for. The Sinhala word is the point of entry; the English equivalent is what you come away with.
Dr Jayawardhana's lexicographical work extends in the other direction as well. He also compiled an English-Sinhala dictionary, and English-Sinhala dictionaries intended for school use, so this title sits within a connected body of reference work by one editor rather than standing alone.
For buyers outside Sri Lanka, Sinhala-language and bilingual reference books are difficult to find through ordinary retail channels, and a general Sinhala-English dictionary produced in Colombo for Sri Lankan readers answers a need that imported language guides and phrasebooks do not. This is a working reference volume, meant to be kept at hand and consulted, rather than a book to be read through.
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