14 DAY TRIAL // Google has added five more languages to its popular Google Translate tool. These languages are now in the early stages of support, so translations may not be as polished or as accurate as the other languages in Translate. With the addition of Azerbaijani, Armenian, Basque, Urdu and Georgian to the list of supported languages in Google Translate, the total number goes up to 57.
“In 2009, we announced the addition of our first ‘alpha’ language, Persian, on Google Translate. Today, we are excited to add five more alpha languages: Azerbaijani, Armenian, Basque, Urdu and Georgian — bringing the total number of languages on Google Translate to 57,” Ashish Venugopal, research scientist at Google, wrote.
“These languages are available while still in alpha status. You can expect translations to be less fluent than for our other languages, but they should still help you understand the multilingual web. We are working hard to ‘graduate’ these new language[s] out of alpha status, just as we did some time ago with Persian,” he added.
There are 100 million speakers of the five languages included now in Google Translate. Urdu is the most widely spoken language of the bunch, by 70 million individuals, mostly in Pakistan and surrounding areas. All languages are labeled as ‘alpha’ and their graduation will depend on how fast the quality of the translations meets Google’s internal standards.
This mostly depends on user contribution, as Google’s translation technologies rely on the machine learning to improve the accuracy of the translations. You can help by providing better translations using the link on the Google Translate site or by employing tools like translation memories or the Google Translate Toolkit. Google Translate also expanded support for the text-to-speech feature. The latest addition brings up the total number to 34 languages, which have the text-to-speech option.