Google declared yesterday that Google Translate now supports 13 additional languages, bringing the total to 103. The service covers 99% of the online population now, according to the company’s estimate.
Google improving services overtime
Google Translate now supports Amharic, Corsican, Frisian, Kyrgyz, Hawaiian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Luxembourgish, Samoan, Scots Gaelic, Shona, Sindhi, Pashto, and Xhosa. The Internet firm says the latest addition will help bring “a combined 120 million new people to the billions who can already communicate with Translate all over the world.”
Google Translate slowly but steadily is increasing its services across the world. It was launched in April 2006 using rule-based machine translations between English and Arabic, followed by translations between English and Russian in December 2006. The increase of new languages was hiked in 2007, and thus, in just a decade, the service passed the 100 languages mark.
Google Translate continues to improve translations by enhancing algorithms and systems and by learning from user translations. The search giant has updated its Breakdown Page, which displays the features supported by each language. The 13 new languages are only available for typing.
There are six ways Google Translate can support a language: Type: Just use your keyboard; Talk: Have a bilingual conversation; Snap: Translate images of text in a different language; See: Instant translations with the use of Phone’s camera; Write: Draw letters or characters with your finger; and Offline: Text translations without a data connection.
Google Translate’s primary criteria to add a “new tongue” is that it must be a written language. The team though requires “a significant amount of translations in the new language to be available on the web” so that it can influence machine learning, licensed content, and its Translator Community.
Forays into grocery delivery
In other Google news, last year, the Internet firm notified users that its delivery service Google Express would be entering the crowded, not so profitable grocery delivery game. This week, the company fulfilled its promise and launched the same-day delivery of fresh grocery goods in San Francisco and Los Angeles, reports The Wall Street Journal. The service will be picking up deliveries from partnering grocery stores like Costco, Whole Foods, Smart & Final, and Vicente’s Supermarket, in Los Angeles instead of depending on warehouses.
Google clarified that the fresh and frozen goods will be kept in a cooler until they are delivered safely at the consumer’s doorstep. Delivery costs start at $4.99 and will probably ramp up depending on the size or availability of the items ordered.
