Where would the world be without Google Translate? It's a seemingly simple service, but in reality exists as a triumph of complex algorithms and human guidance. And now, Google has added 10 new languages to the fold, bringing the total languages offered to 90.
Here's a list of the new languages, broken down by region:
Africa
- Chichewa (Chinyanja) – 12 million speakers in Malawi
- Malagasy – 18 million speakers in Madagascar
- Sesotho – 6 million in people in Lesotho
India and Southeast Asia
- Malayalam (മലയാളം) – 38 million speakers in India
- Myanmar (Burmese) – 33 million speakers in Myanmar
- Sinhala (සිංහල) – 16 million speakers in Sri Lanka
- Sundanese – 39 million speakers in Java (Indonesia)
Central Asia
- Kazakh (Қазақ тілі) – 11 million speakers in Kazakhstan
- Tajik (Тоҷикӣ) – 4 million speakers in Tajikistan
- Uzbek (Oʻzbek tili) – 25 million speakers in Uzbekistan
These numbers alone add 202 million speakers to the Google Translate family, and that's not including speakers of the languages in other countries.
Google has crowdsourced much of its language development to the Translate Community, as artificial intelligence is not yet smart enough to harvest us for energy.
Bear in mind some of these languages use special characters, so you'll need to make sure your device is set up, accordingly.
The new languages are available on translate.google.com and will roll out soon to mobile apps and to Chrome's built-in Translate functionality. Check out the map below to get a visual on the countries serviced by the update.
Source: Google
