Google Translate has announced on Wednesday adding support for 13 more languages, bringing the total to 103. The service is now expected to cover 99% of the online population.
The 13 new languages are Amharic, Corsican, Frisian, Kyrgyz, Hawaiian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Sindhi, Luxembourgish, Samoan, Scots Gaelic, Shona, Pashto and Xhosa. Google estimates bringing 120 million new people to the population capable of communicating with Translate all over the world, reports CNN Money.
Google Translate has started its journey in April 2006 offering rule based machine translation between English and Arabic. Translation between English and Russian has been followed in December 2006 while ramping up addition of languages in 2007. The service has passed 100 languages mark in just under 10 years, reports VentureBeat.
Meanwhile, YouTube considers Google Translate far from perfect translator. The retranslation feature of the translating device appears rather confusing and YouTube has made fun video songs highlighting the inaccuracies. This recent example from YouTube has shown the world the weird side of translating, reports ClapWay. Google has updated its breakdown page showing a list for supported features by each language marking the addition of languages. However, the recently added languages are available for typing purposes only. Sophisticated machine learning is used in this program to translate large swath of text and spoken language. Google has reportedly acknowledged tips from over 3 million users to improve the translation service. Writing capability in a language appears as the foremost criteria for a tongue to get added to Google translate. It also requires a significant amount of translations in the new language to be available on the web. The available translations may leverage machine learning, licensed content and Translate community to offer decent results. The three million members of the translate community have so far contributed around 200 million words in the web. But still Google Translate has been improving translations through updating its algorithms and systems. The system also improves itself learning from user translations with the Translate Community. Google has also appealed for help from the users ahead of International Mother Language Day. To help Google Translate, users need to select the mother tongue while choosing either self translation of phrases or validating existing translations. This may be treated as volunteering for Google, owned by Alphabet, one of the world's most valuable companies.
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