I'm a Tamil speaker (but raised in Canada so, not as fluent as a native speaker), and agree, there's a lot of information loss when going from Tamil to English simply because there's multiple letters that either have no English equivalent, or are aren't distinguished in English.
I would translate மத்தளம்பாறை as MaththalampaaRai, rather than Mathalamparai. The a's have different lengths, so single a's are short (as in "ma"), and double a's are long. Double consonants like "த்த" are pronounced separately, so "Matha-" should be "Maththa". And finally, the "R" at the end is a rolling r, distinguished from the regular r "ர" - a good example of a Tamil letter with no equivalent letter in English!
And, I know this is unrelated, but in terms of syntax, I find Tamil to English translation really suffers from the way Tamil reverse subject object verb order (Tamil is to Reverse Polish Notation (RPA) as English is to regular, clunky, bracket notation), and the option multiple words into a single verb with recursively adding suffixes. Tamil basically offers a lot more degrees of freedom then English, which makes it far more expressive, but also adds a lot of cost to mastering correct grammar. The majority of 1st generation Tamils can only speak a simpler subset of the language. Personally, I find Tamil tends to be less clunky, and have quicker, more pleasing rhythm, then any English equivalent.
I would translate மத்தளம்பாறை as MaththalampaaRai, rather than Mathalamparai. The a's have different lengths, so single a's are short (as in "ma"), and double a's are long. Double consonants like "த்த" are pronounced separately, so "Matha-" should be "Maththa". And finally, the "R" at the end is a rolling r, distinguished from the regular r "ர" - a good example of a Tamil letter with no equivalent letter in English!
And, I know this is unrelated, but in terms of syntax, I find Tamil to English translation really suffers from the way Tamil reverse subject object verb order (Tamil is to Reverse Polish Notation (RPA) as English is to regular, clunky, bracket notation), and the option multiple words into a single verb with recursively adding suffixes. Tamil basically offers a lot more degrees of freedom then English, which makes it far more expressive, but also adds a lot of cost to mastering correct grammar. The majority of 1st generation Tamils can only speak a simpler subset of the language. Personally, I find Tamil tends to be less clunky, and have quicker, more pleasing rhythm, then any English equivalent.