Google Translate: Five New 'Alpha' Languages Available
Back in the summer of 2009 we were reporting that Google Translate, the free online language translation service that can translate text as well as web pages, added support for Persian, thus allowsing users to translate news stories, websites, emails, tweets and even Facebook messages from English to Persian and the other way around.
Persian was the first “alpha” language Google Translate provided support for. While Persian is no longer an alpha language, other languages are. Google Translate recently announced that it added support for 5 new alpha languages. These languages are as follows: Azerbaijani, Armenian, Basque, Urdu and Georgian.
“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 languages out of alpha status, just as we did some time ago with Persian,” commented Research Scientist Ashish Venugopal. “Collectively, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Georgian and Urdu have roughly 100 million speakers. We hope that these speakers can now more easily access the entire multilingual web in their own language.”
With the addition of Azerbaijani, Armenian, Basque, Urdu and Georgian, the total number of languages Google Translate provides support for has jumped to 59.
In related news, you already know that Google Translate offers a text-to-speech feature that allows you to listed to the word or phrase you just translated. The team behind Google Translate has added text to speech functionality for a lot more languages thanks to Speak, an open source speech synthesizer. The new languages Google Translate’s text-to-speech provides support for are Afrikaans, Albanian, Catalan, Chinese (Mandarin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Latvian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese and Welsh.
If you would like to get started with Google Translate, visit the official web page here.
Persian was the first “alpha” language Google Translate provided support for. While Persian is no longer an alpha language, other languages are. Google Translate recently announced that it added support for 5 new alpha languages. These languages are as follows: Azerbaijani, Armenian, Basque, Urdu and Georgian.
“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 languages out of alpha status, just as we did some time ago with Persian,” commented Research Scientist Ashish Venugopal. “Collectively, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Georgian and Urdu have roughly 100 million speakers. We hope that these speakers can now more easily access the entire multilingual web in their own language.”
With the addition of Azerbaijani, Armenian, Basque, Urdu and Georgian, the total number of languages Google Translate provides support for has jumped to 59.
In related news, you already know that Google Translate offers a text-to-speech feature that allows you to listed to the word or phrase you just translated. The team behind Google Translate has added text to speech functionality for a lot more languages thanks to Speak, an open source speech synthesizer. The new languages Google Translate’s text-to-speech provides support for are Afrikaans, Albanian, Catalan, Chinese (Mandarin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Latvian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese and Welsh.
If you would like to get started with Google Translate, visit the official web page here.
