Google Translate is a

multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...

neural

machine translation Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates t ...

service developed by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

translate Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

for Android and

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

, and an

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

that helps developers build browser extensions and

software application Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

s. As of , Google Translate supports languages at various levels, and , claimed over 500 million total users, with more than 100 billion words translated daily, after the company stated in May 2013 that it served over 200 million people daily. Launched in April 2006 as a

statistical machine translation Statistical machine translation (SMT) is a machine translation paradigm where translations are generated on the basis of statistical models whose parameters are derived from the analysis of bilingual text corpora. The statistical approach contras ...

service, it used

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...

and

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...

documents and transcripts to gather linguistic data. Rather than translating languages directly, it first translates text to English and then pivots to the target language in most of the language combinations it posits in its grid, with a few exceptions including Catalan-Spanish. During a translation, it looks for patterns in millions of documents to help decide which words to choose and how to arrange them in the target language. Its accuracy, which has been criticized on several occasions, has been measured to vary greatly across languages. In November 2016, Google announced that Google Translate would switch to a

neural machine translation Neural machine translation (NMT) is an approach to machine translation that uses an artificial neural network to predict the likelihood of a sequence of words, typically modeling entire sentences in a single integrated model. Properties They requi ...

engine –

Google Neural Machine Translation Google Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) is a neural machine translation (NMT) system developed by Google and introduced in November 2016, that uses an artificial neural network to increase fluency and accuracy in Google Translate. GNMT improve ...

(GNMT) – which translates "whole sentences at a time, rather than just piece by piece. It uses this broader context to help it figure out the most relevant translation, which it then rearranges and adjusts to be more like a human speaking with proper grammar".

History

Google Translate is a web-based free-to-user translation service developed by Google in April 2006. It translates multiple forms of texts and media such as words, phrases and webpages. Originally, Google Translate was released as a

service. The input text had to be translated into English first before being translated into the selected language. Since SMT uses predictive

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

s to translate text, it had poor grammatical accuracy. Despite this, Google initially did not hire experts to resolve this limitation due to the ever-evolving nature of language. In January 2010, Google introduced an Android app and iOS version in February 2011 to serve as a portable personal interpreter. As of February 2010, it was integrated into browsers such as Chrome and was able to pronounce the translated text, automatically recognize words in a picture and spot unfamiliar text and languages. In May 2014, Google acquired

Word Lens Word Lens was an augmented reality translation application from Quest Visual. Word Lens used the built-in cameras on smartphones and similar devices to quickly scan and identify foreign text (such as that found in a sign or a menu), and then tr ...

to improve the quality of visual and voice translation. It is able to scan text or a picture using the device and have it translated instantly. Moreover, the system automatically identifies foreign languages and translates speech without requiring individuals to tap the microphone button whenever

speech translation Speech translation is the process by which conversational spoken phrases are instantly translated and spoken aloud in a second language. This differs from phrase translation, which is where the system only translates a fixed and finite set of ph ...

is needed. In November 2016, Google transitioned its translating method to a system called

. It uses deep learning techniques to translate whole sentences at a time, which has been measured to be more accurate between English and French, German, Spanish, and Chinese. Retrieved May 14, 2017 No measurement results have been provided by Google researchers for GNMT from English to other languages, other languages to English, or between language pairs that do not include English. As of 2018, it translates more than 100 billion words a day. In 2017, Google Translate was used during a court hearing when court officials at

Teesside Teesside () is a built-up area around the River Tees in the north of England, split between County Durham and North Yorkshire. The name was initially used as a county borough in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Historically a hub for heavy manu ...

Magistrates' Court failed to book an interpreter for the Chinese defendant. At the end of September 2022, Google Translate was discontinued in

mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...

, which Google said was due to "low usage" (see Internet censorship in China).

Functions

Google Translate can translate multiple forms of text and media, which includes text, speech, and text within still or moving images. Specifically, its functions include: *Written Words Translation: a function that translates written words or text to a foreign language. *Website Translation: a function that translates a whole webpage to selected languages. *Document Translation: a function that translates a document uploaded by the users to selected languages. The documents should be in the form of: .doc, .docx, .odf, .pdf, .ppt, .pptx, .ps, .rtf, .txt, .xls, .xlsx. *Speech Translation: a function that instantly translates spoken language into the selected foreign language. *Mobile App Translation: in 2018, Google introduced its new Google Translate feature called "Tap to Translate", which made instant translation accessible inside any app without exiting or switching it. *Image Translation: a function that identifies text in a picture taken by the users and translates text on the screen instantly by images. *Handwritten Translation: a function that translates language that are handwritten on the phone screen or drawn on a virtual keyboard without the support of a keyboard. *Bilingual Conversation Translation: a function that translates conversations in multiple languages. *Transcription: a function that transcribes speech in different languages. For most of its features, Google Translate provides the pronunciation, dictionary, and listening to translation. Additionally, Google Translate has introduced its own Translate app, so translation is available with a mobile phone in offline mode.

Features

Web interface

Google Translate produces approximations across languages of multiple forms of text and media, including text, speech, websites, or text on display in still or live video images. For some languages, Google Translate can synthesize speech from text, and in certain pairs it is possible to highlight specific corresponding words and phrases between the source and target text. Results are sometimes shown with dictional information below the translation box, but it is not a dictionary and has been shown to invent translations in all languages for words it does not recognize. If "Detect language" is selected, text in an unknown language can be automatically identified. In the web interface, users can suggest alternate translations, such as for technical terms, or correct mistakes. These suggestions may be included in future updates to the translation process. If a user enters a URL in the source text, Google Translate will produce a hyperlink to a machine translation of the website. Users can save translation proposals in a "phrasebook" for later use, and a shareable URL is generated for each translation. For some languages, text can be entered via an

on-screen keyboard A virtual keyboard is a software component that allows the input of characters without the need for physical keys. The interaction with the virtual keyboard happens mostly via a touchscreen interface, but can also take place in a different form ...

, through

handwriting recognition Handwriting recognition (HWR), also known as handwritten text recognition (HTR), is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other de ...

, or

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the ...

. It is possible to enter searches in a source language that are first translated to a destination language allowing one to browse and interpret results from the selected destination language in the source language. Texts written in the

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

, Cyrillic,

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...

and

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

scripts can be transliterated automatically from phonetic equivalents written in the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

. The browser version of Google Translate provides the option to show phonetic equivalents of text translated from Japanese to English. The same option is not available on the paid API version. Google Eng Accent

Many of the more popular languages have a "text-to-speech" audio function that is able to read back a text in that language, up to a few dozen words or so. In the case of pluricentric languages, the accent depends on the region: for English, in the

Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...

, most of the Asia-Pacific and

Western Asia Western Asia, West Asia, or Southwest Asia, is the westernmost subregion of the larger geographical region of Asia, as defined by some academics, UN bodies and other institutions. It is almost entirely a part of the Middle East, and includes Ana ...

, the audio uses a female

General American General American English or General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm) is the umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans. In the United States it is often perceived as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or so ...

accent, whereas in Europe,

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

, Guyana and all other parts of the world, a female

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

(

Received Pronunciation Received Pronunciation (RP) is the accent traditionally regarded as the standard and most prestigious form of spoken British English. For over a century, there has been argument over such questions as the definition of RP, whether it is geog ...

) accent is used, except for a special

General Australian Australian English is relatively homogeneous when compared with British and American English. The major varieties of Australian English are sociocultural rather than regional. They are divided into 3 main categories: general, broad and cultivated ...

accent used in Australia, New Zealand and Norfolk Island, and an Indian English accent used in India; for Spanish, in the

, a

Latin American Latin Americans ( es, Latinoamericanos; pt, Latino-americanos; ) are the citizens of Latin American countries (or people with cultural, ancestral or national origins in Latin America). Latin American countries and their diasporas are multi-eth ...

accent is used, while in the other parts of the world, a Castilian accent is used; for

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

, a

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...

accent is used around the world, except in Portugal, where their native accent is used instead; for French, a

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

accent is used in Canada, while in the other parts of the world, a standard European accent is used; for

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

, a male Bangladeshi accent is used, except in India, where a special female Indian Bengali accent is used instead. Some less widely spoken languages use the open-source

eSpeak eSpeakNG is a free and open-source, cross-platform, compact, software speech synthesizer. It uses a formant synthesis method, providing many languages in a relatively small file size. Much of the programming for eSpeakNG's language support is ...

synthesizer for their speech; producing a robotic, awkward voice that may be difficult to understand.

Browser integration

Google Translate is available in some

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

s as an optional downloadable extension that can run the translation engine, which allow right-click command access to the translation service. In February 2010, Google Translate was integrated into the Google Chrome browser by default, for optional automatic webpage translation.

Mobile app

The Google Translate app for Android and

supports languages and can propose translations for 37 languages via photo, 32 via voice in "conversation mode", and 27 via live video imagery in "augmented reality mode". The Android app was released in January 2010, and for iOS on February 8, 2011, after an

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serv ...

was released for iOS users in August 2008. The Android app is compatible with devices running at least Android 2.1, while the iOS app is compatible with iPod Touches,

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...

s, and iPhones updated to iOS 7.0+. A January 2011 Android version experimented with a "Conversation Mode" that aims to allow users to communicate fluidly with a nearby person in another language. Originally limited to English and Spanish, the feature received support for 12 new languages, still in testing, the following October. The 'Camera input' functionality allows users to take a photograph of a document, signboard, etc. Google Translate recognises the text from the image using

optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a sc ...

(OCR) technology and gives the translation. Camera input is not available for all languages. In January 2015, the apps gained the ability to propose translations of physical signs in real time using the device's camera, as a result of Google's acquisition of the

app. The original January launch only supported seven languages, but a July update added support for 20 new languages, with the release of a new implementation that utilizes

convolutional neural network In deep learning, a convolutional neural network (CNN, or ConvNet) is a class of artificial neural network (ANN), most commonly applied to analyze visual imagery. CNNs are also known as Shift Invariant or Space Invariant Artificial Neural Netwo ...

s, and also enhanced the speed and quality of Conversation Mode translations ( augmented reality). The feature was subsequently renamed Instant Camera. The technology underlying Instant Camera combines image processing and optical character recognition, then attempts to produce cross-language equivalents using standard Google Translate estimations for the text as it is perceived. On May 11, 2016, Google introduced ''Tap to Translate'' for Google Translate for Android. Upon highlighting text in an app that is in a foreign language, Translate will pop up inside of the app and offer translations.

API

On May 26, 2011, Google announced that the Google Translate

for software developers had been deprecated and would cease functioning. The Translate API page stated the reason as "substantial economic burden caused by extensive abuse" with an end date set for December 1, 2011. In response to public pressure, Google announced in June 2011 that the API would continue to be available as a paid service. Because the API was used in numerous third-party websites and apps, the original decision to deprecate it led some developers to criticize Google and question the viability of using Google APIs in their products.

Google Assistant

Google Translate also provides translations for

Google Assistant Google Assistant is a virtual assistant software application developed by Google that is primarily available on mobile and home automation devices. Based on artificial intelligence, Google Assistant can engage in two-way conversations, unlike t ...

and the devices that Google Assistant runs on such as

Google Nest Google Nest is a line of smart home products including smart speakers, smart displays, streaming devices, thermostats, smoke detectors, routers and security systems including smart doorbells, cameras and smart locks. The Nest brand name was ...

and

Pixel Buds The Pixel Buds is a line of wireless Earphones, earbuds developed and marketed by Google. The first-generation Pixel Buds were launched on October 4, 2017, at the Made by Google launch event, and became available for preorder on the Google Store ...

Supported languages

As of , the following 133 languages are supported by Google Translate. #

Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gra ...

# Albanian # Amharic #

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

# Assamese #

Aymara Aymara may refer to: Languages and people * Aymaran languages, the second most widespread Andean language ** Aymara language, the main language within that family ** Central Aymara, the other surviving branch of the Aymara(n) family, which today ...

# Azerbaijani # Bambara #

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

# Belarusian #

# Bhojpuri # Bosnian #

Bulgarian Bulgarian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Bulgaria * Bulgarians, a South Slavic ethnic group * Bulgarian language, a Slavic language * Bulgarian alphabet * A citizen of Bulgaria, see Demographics of Bulgaria * Bul ...

# Burmese (Myanmar) #

Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...

# Cebuano #

Chewa Chewa may refer to: *the Chewa people *the Chewa language Chewa (also known as Nyanja, ) is a Bantu language spoken in much of Southern, Southeast and East Africa, namely the countries of Malawi , where it is an official language, and Mozambiq ...

(Chichewa) #

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

( Simplified) #

(

Traditional A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...

) # Corsican # Croatian #

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

Dogri Dogri ( Name Dogra Akkhar: ; Devanagari: डोगरी; Nastaliq: ; ) is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, India, with smaller groups of speakers in adjoining regions of western Himachal Prad ...

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

# Esperanto # Estonian # Ewe #

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

# French # Galician #

Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group ** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scrip ...

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

# Guarani #

Gujarati Gujarati may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India * Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat * Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them * Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub ...

# Haitian Creole #

Hausa Hausa may refer to: * Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa * Hausa language, spoken in West Africa * Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states * Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse See also ...

# Hawaiian #

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

Hmong Hmong may refer to: * Hmong people, an ethnic group living mainly in Southwest China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand * Hmong cuisine * Hmong customs and culture ** Hmong music ** Hmong textile art * Hmong language, a continuum of closely related to ...

# Hungarian # Icelandic #

Igbo Igbo may refer to: * Igbo people, an ethnic group of Nigeria * Igbo language, their language * anything related to Igboland, a cultural region in Nigeria See also * Ibo (disambiguation) * Igbo mythology * Igbo music * Igbo art * * Igbo-Ukwu, a ...

# Ilocano # Indonesian #

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

# Javanese #

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

# Kazakh # Khmer #

Kinyarwanda Kinyarwanda, Rwandan or Rwanda, officially known as Ikinyarwanda, is a Bantu language and a dialect of the Rwanda-Rundi language that is spoken in Rwanda and adjacent parts of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda (where t ...

# Konkani #

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

# Krio #

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish languages *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern Kurdistan **Eastern Kurdistan **Northern Kurdistan **Western Kurdistan See also * Kurd (dis ...

(

Kurmanji Kurmanji ( ku, کورمانجی, lit=Kurdish, translit=Kurmancî, also termed Northern Kurdish, is the northern dialect of the Kurdish languages, spoken predominantly in southeast Turkey, northwest and northeast Iran, northern Iraq, northern Sy ...

) #

(

Sorani Central Kurdish (), also called Sorani (), is a Kurdish dialect or a language that is spoken in Iraq, mainly in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as the provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and West Azerbaijan in western Iran. Sorani is one of the two o ...

) # Kyrgyz # Lao #

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

# Latvian #

Lingala Lingala (Ngala) (Lingala: ''Lingála'') is a Bantu language spoken in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the northern half of the Republic of the Congo, in their capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and to a lesser degree in ...

# Lithuanian # Luganda #

Luxembourgish Luxembourgish ( ; also ''Luxemburgish'', ''Luxembourgian'', ''Letzebu(e)rgesch''; Luxembourgish: ) is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 400,000 people speak Luxembourgish worldwide. As a standard form of th ...

# Macedonian # Maithili # Malagasy # Malay #

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...

# Maldivian (Dhivehi) # Maltese #

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

(Maori) #

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...

# Meitei (Manipuri, Meiteilon) # Mizo # Mongolian # Nepali #

Northern Sotho Northern Sotho, or as an endonym, is a Sotho-Tswana language spoken in the northeastern provinces of South Africa. It is sometimes referred to as or , its main dialect, through synecdoche. According to the South African National Census o ...

(Sepedi) #

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

# Odia (Oriya) # Oromo #

Pashto Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

# Punjabi (

Gurmukhi Gurmukhī ( pa, ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ, , Shahmukhi: ) is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552). It is used by Punjabi Sikhs to write the language, commonly ...

) #

Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language **So ...

Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language *** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language ** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

# Samoan #

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well ...

(Scots Gaelic) # Serbian #

Sesotho Sotho () or Sesotho () or Southern Sotho is a Southern Bantu language of the Sotho–Tswana ("S.30") group, spoken primarily by the Basotho in Lesotho, where it is the national and official language; South Africa (particularly the Free ...

Shona Shona often refers to: * Shona people, a Southern African people * Shona language, a Bantu language spoken by Shona people today Shona may also refer to: * ''Shona'' (album), 1994 album by New Zealand singer Shona Laing * Shona (given name) * S ...

# Sindhi # Sinhala # Slovak #

Slovenian Slovene or Slovenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Slovenia, a country in Central Europe * Slovene language, a South Slavic language mainly spoken in Slovenia * Slovenes The Slovenes, also known as Slovenians ( sl, Sloven ...

# Somali #

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

# Sundanese # Swahili #

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

# Tagalog (

Filipino Filipino may refer to: * Something from or related to the Philippines ** Filipino language, standardized variety of 'Tagalog', the national language and one of the official languages of the Philippines. ** Filipinos, people who are citizens of th ...

) # Tajik #

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...

Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different

# Telugu # Thai #

Tigrinya (; also spelled Tigrigna) is an Ethio-Semitic language commonly spoken Eritrea and in northern Ethiopia's Tigray Region by the Tigrinya and Tigrayan peoples. It is also spoken by the global diaspora of these regions. History and literatur ...

# Tsonga # Turkish # Turkmen #

Twi Twi () is a dialect of the Akan language spoken in southern and central Ghana by several million people, mainly of the Akan people, the largest of the seventeen major ethnic groups in Ghana. Twi has about 17-18 million speakers in total, includ ...

Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Uyghur # Uzbek #

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

# Welsh # West Frisian (Frisian) #

Xhosa Xhosa may refer to: * Xhosa people, a nation, and ethnic group, who live in south-central and southeasterly region of South Africa * Xhosa language, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, principally spoken by the Xhosa people See als ...

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

Yoruba The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...

# Zulu

Stages

''(by chronological order of introduction)'' #1st stage ##English to and from French ##English to and from

##English to and from

#2nd stage ##English to and from

#3rd stage ##English to and from

#4th stage ##English to and from

( Simplified) ##English to and from

##English to and from

#5th stage (launched April 28, 2006) ##English to and from

#6th stage (launched December 16, 2006) ##English to and from

#7th stage (launched February 9, 2007) ##English to and from

(

) ##

(( Simplified) to and from

) #8th stage (all 25 language pairs use Google's machine translation system) (launched October 22, 2007) ##English to and from

##English to and from

#9th stage ##English to and from

#10th stage (as of this stage, translation can be done between any two languages, using English as an intermediate step, if needed) (launched May 8, 2008) ##

## Croatian ##

(

Bokmål Bokmål () (, ; ) is an official written standard for the Norwegian language, alongside Nynorsk. Bokmål is the preferred written standard of Norwegian for 85% to 90% of the population in Norway. Unlike, for instance, the Italian language, there ...

) ##

#11th stage (launched September 25, 2008) ##

( Tagalog) ##

## Indonesian ## Latvian ## Lithuanian ## Serbian ## Slovak ## Slovene ##

#12th stage (launched January 30, 2009) ## Albanian ## Estonian ## Galician ## Hungarian ## Maltese ## Thai ## Turkish #13th stage (launched June 19, 2009) ##

#14th stage (launched August 24, 2009) ##

## Belarusian ## Icelandic ##

## Macedonian ## Malay ## Swahili ## Welsh ##

#15th stage (launched November 19, 2009) ##The Beta stage is finished. Users can now choose to have the

romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, a ...

written for Belarusian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Greek, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Thai and Ukrainian. For translations from Arabic, Hindi and Persian, the user can enter a Latin transliteration of the text and the text will be transliterated to the native script for these languages as the user is typing. The text can now be read by a

text-to-speech Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal langua ...

program in English, French, German and Italian. #16th stage (launched January 30, 2010) ## Haitian Creole #17th stage (launched April 2010) ##Speech program launched in Hindi and Spanish. #18th stage (launched May 5, 2010) ##Speech program launched in 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 (based on

) #19th stage (launched May 13, 2010) ##

## Azerbaijani ##

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

#22nd stage (launched December 2010) ##Romanization of Arabic removed. ##Spell check added. ##For some languages, Google replaced text-to-speech synthesizers from eSpeak's robot voice to native speaker's nature voice technologies made by SVOX (Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish and Turkish), and also the old versions of French, German, Italian and Spanish; Latin uses the same synthesizer as Italian. ##Speech program launched in Arabic, Japanese and Korean. #23rd stage (launched January 2011) ##Choice of different translations for a word. #24th stage (launched June 2011) ##5 new Indic languages (in alpha) and a transliterated input method: ##

## Telugu #25th stage (launched July 2011) ##Translation rating introduced. #26th stage (launched January 2012) ##Dutch male voice synthesizer replaced with female. ##Elena by SVOX replaced the Slovak eSpeak voice. ##Transliteration of Yiddish added. #27th stage (launched February 2012) ##Speech program launched in Thai. ## Esperanto #28th stage (launched September 2012) ## Lao #29th stage (launched October 2012) ##Transliteration of Lao added. (alpha status) #30th stage (launched October 2012) ##New speech program launched in English. #31st stage (launched November 2012) ##New speech program in French, German, Italian, Latin and Spanish. #32nd stage (launched March 2013) ##Phrasebook added. #33rd stage (launched April 2013) ## Khmer #34th stage (launched May 2013) ## Bosnian ## Cebuano ##

## Javanese ##

#35th stage (launched May 2013) ##16 additional languages can be used with camera-input: Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian and Swedish. #36th stage (launched December 2013) ##

## Maori ## Mongolian ## Nepali ## Punjabi (

) ## Somali ##

## Zulu #37th stage (launched June 2014) ##Definition of words added. #38th stage (launched December 2014) ## Burmese ##

## Kazakh ## Malagasy ##

## Sinhala ##

Sotho Sotho may refer to: *Sotho people (or ''Basotho''), an African ethnic group principally resident in South Africa, Lesotho and southern Botswana * Sotho language (''Sesotho'' or ''Southern Sotho''), a Bantu language spoken in southern Africa, an off ...

## Sundanese ## Tajik ## Uzbek #39th stage (launched October 2015) ##Transliteration of Arabic restored. #40th stage (launched November 2015) ## Aurebesh #41st stage (launched February 2016) ##Aurebesh removed. ##Speech program launched in Bengali. ## Amharic ## Corsican ## Hawaiian ##

(

) ## Kyrgyz ##

## Samoan ##

## Sindhi ## West Frisian ##

#42nd stage (launched September 2016) ##Speech program launched in Ukrainian. #43rd stage (launched December 2016) ##Speech program launched in Khmer and Sinhala. #44th stage (launched June 2018) ##Speech program launched in Burmese, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali and Telugu. #45th stage (launched September 2019) ##Speech program launched in Gujarati, Kannada and Urdu. #46th stage (launched February 2020) ##

## Odia ##

Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different

## Turkmen ## Uyghur #47th stage (launched February 2021) ##Speech program launched in Afrikaans, Bulgarian, Catalan, Icelandic, Latvian, and Serbian (changed from eSpeak to a natural voice). ##New speech system (WaveNet) for several languages. #48th stage (launched January 2022) ##Speech program launched in Hebrew. #49th stage (launched May 2022) ## Assamese ##

## Bambara ## Bhojpuri ##

## Ewe ## Guarani ## Ilocano ## Konkani ## Krio ##

(

) ##

## Luganda ## Maithili ## Maldivian ## Meitei ## Mizo ## Sepedi ## Oromo ##

## Tsonga ##

##eSpeak voice synthesizer removed from Armenian, Esperanto, Macedonian and Welsh. #50th stage (launched November 2022) ##New speech program launched for Albanian, Bosnian and Swahili.

Languages in development and beta version

The following languages are not yet supported by Google Translate, but are available in the Translate Community. As of , there are 103 languages in development, of which 9 are in beta version. The languages in beta version are closer to their public release and have an exclusive extra option to contribute that allows evaluating up to 4 translations of the beta version by translating an English text of up to 50 characters. There is currently a petition for Google to add Cree to Google Translate, but as of , it is not one of the languages in development. # Acehnese # Adyghe # Afar # Aragonese # Avar (Avaric) #

Bagheli Bagheli (Devanagari: बघेली) or Baghelkhandi is a Central Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Baghelkhand region of central India. Classification An independent language belonging to the Eastern Hindi subgroup, Bagheli is one of the ...

# Balochi (Baluchi) # Bangala # Baoulé # Bashkir # Berber (Tamazight) # Betawi #

Bodo Bodo may refer to: Ethnicity * Boro people, an ethno-linguistic group mainly from Northwest Assam, India * Bodo-Kachari people, an umbrella group from Nepal, India and Bangladesh that includes the Bodo people Culture and language * Boro cu ...

(Boro) # Breton #

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding ar ...

# Chechen #

Cherokee The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, t ...

# Chhattisgarhi # Chittagonian # Chuvash # Deccani # Dholuo # Dyula # Dzongkha # Edo # Efik # Esan # Fon #

Fula Fula may refer to: *Fula people (or Fulani, Fulɓe) *Fula language (or Pulaar, Fulfulde, Fulani) **The Fula variety known as the Pulaar language **The Fula variety known as the Pular language **The Fula variety known as Maasina Fulfulde *Al-Fula ...

(Fulah) # Gagauz #

Garhwali Garhwali may refer to: * Garhwali people, an ethno-linguistic group who live in northern India * Garhwali language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by Garhwali people * anything from or related to: **Garhwal division, a region in state of Uttarakhan ...

# Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) #

Haryanvi Haryanvi ( ' or '), also known as Bangru, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the state of Haryana in India, and to a lesser extent in Delhi. Haryanvi is considered to be part of the dialect group of Western Hindi, which also includes Kharib ...

# Hiligaynon # Inuktitut # Isoko #

Kamba Kamba may refer to: *Kamba people The Kamba or Akamba (sometimes called Wakamba) people are a Bantu ethnic group who predominantly live in the area of Kenya stretching from Nairobi to Tsavo and north to Embu, in the southern part of the f ...

# Kanuri # Kapampangan (Pampanga) #

Karachay-Balkar Karachay-Balkar (, ), or Mountain Turkic (, ), is a Turkic language spoken by the Karachays and Balkars in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay–Cherkessia, European Russia, as well as by an immigrant population in Afyonkarahisar Province, Turkey. ...

# Karakalpak (Kara-Kalpak) #

Kashmiri Kashmiri may refer to: * People or things related to the Kashmir Valley or the broader region of Kashmir * Kashmiris, an ethnic group native to the Kashmir Valley * Kashmiri language, their language People with the name * Kashmiri Saikia Baruah ...

# Kedah Malay #

Khakas The Khakas (also spelled Khakass; Khakas: , ''khakas'', , ''tadar'', , ''khakastar'', , ''tadarlar'') are a Turkic indigenous people of Siberia, who live in the republic of Khakassia, Russia. They speak the Khakas language. The Khakhassian ...

Khandeshi Khandeshi is a language spoken in the Maharashtra state of India. It is spoken in the Khandesh region (Districts Dhule, Jalgaon and Nandurbar ��ुळे, जळगाव आणि नंदुरबार wedged between the territory of Bhi ...

(Ahirani) #

Khorasani Turkic Khorasani Turkic (, ) is an Oghuz Turkic language spoken in the North Khorasan Province and the Razavi Khorasan Province in Iran. Nearly all Khorasani Turkic speakers are also bilingual in Persian. The closest language of Khorasani Turkic ...

Kikuyu Kikuyu or Gikuyu (Gĩkũyũ) mostly refers to an ethnic group in Kenya or its associated language. It may also refer to: * Kikuyu people, a majority ethnic group in Kenya *Kikuyu language, the language of Kikuyu people *Kikuyu, Kenya, a town in Cent ...

Kokborok Kokborok (also known as Tripuri or Tiprakok) is the main native language of the Tripuri people of the Indian state of Tripura and neighbouring areas of Bangladesh. Its name comes from ''kok'' meaning "verbal" and ''borok'' meaning "people" or ...

(Tripuri) # Kumyk # Kʼicheʼ #

Lakota Lakota may refer to: * Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language, the language of the Lakota peoples Place names In the United States: * Lakota, Iowa * Lakota, North Dakota, seat of Nelson County * La ...

Lhasa Tibetan Lhasa Tibetan (), or Standard Tibetan, is the Tibetan dialect spoken by educated people of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China. It is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region. In the traditional "three-branc ...

(Tibetan) #

Luba-Kasai Luba-Kasai, also known as Western Luba, ''Bena-Lulua, Cilubà/Tshilubà'', ''Luba-Lulua'' or ''Luva'', is a Bantu language ( Zone L) of Central Africa and a national language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, alongside Lingala, Swahi ...

(Tshiluba) # Luba-Katanga # Madurese #

Magahi The Magahi language (), also known as Magadhi (), is a language spoken in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal states of eastern India, and in the Terai of Nepal. Magadhi Prakrit was the ancestor of Magahi, from which the latter's name derives. ...

# Marwari # Mazanderani #

Minangkabau Minangkabau may refer to: * Minangkabau culture, culture of the Minangkabau people * Minangkabau Culture Documentation and Information Center * Minangkabau Express, an airport rail link service serving Minangkabau International Airport (''see belo ...

# Montenegrin #

Mooré The Mossi language (Mooré) is a Gur language of the Oti–Volta branch and one of two official regional languages of Burkina Faso. It is the language of the Mossi people, spoken by approximately 8 million people in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Cote d ...

(Mossi) # Navajo # Newar (Nepalbhasa) # Nigerian Pidgin #

Northern Sami Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ...

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language, spoken in parts o ...

Pattani Malay Kelantan-Pattani Malay (; ; in Pattani; in Kelantan) is an Austronesian language of the Malayic subfamily spoken in the Malaysian state of Kelantan and the neighbouring southernmost provinces of Thailand. It is the primary spoken language of ...

# Qashqai #

Rajasthani Rajasthani may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Rajasthan, a state of India * Rajasthani languages, a group of languages spoken there * Rajasthani people, the native inhabitants of the region * Rajasthani architecture * Rajasthani art ...

# Rangpuri (Kamtapuri) #

Rohingya The Rohingya people () are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar (previously known as Burma). Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an ...

# Romansh # Sadri # Salar # Samogitian # Sango # Santali # Saraiki # Serrano # Shor #

Siberian Tatar Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...

# Sicilian # Southern Altai # Southern Ndebele # Surjapuri # Swahili Congo #

Sylheti Sylheti may refer to: * Sylhetis, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group in the Sylhet division and South Assam * Sylheti language, a language of the Sylheti region * Sylheti Nagri Sylheti Nagri or Sylheti Nagari ( syl, , ISO: , ), known in cla ...

# Tiv # Toba Batak (Batak Toba) #

Tok Pisin Tok Pisin (,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh ; Tok Pisin ), often referred to by English speakers as "New Guinea Pidgin" or simply Pidgin, is a creole language spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an ...

# Tonga (Zambia and Zimbabwe) (Chitonga) #

Tswana Tswana may refer to: * Tswana people, the Bantu speaking people in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and other Southern Africa regions * Tswana language, the language spoken by the (Ba)Tswana people * Bophuthatswana, the former ba ...

(Setswana) # Tswa # Tuvan (Tuvinian) # Urhobo # Urum #

Varhadi Varhadi is a dialect of Marathi spoken in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra and by Marathi people of adjoining parts of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana in India. Vocabulary and grammar Although all the dialects of Marathi are mutu ...

(Varhadi-Nagpuri) #

Venda Venda () was a Bantustan in northern South Africa, which is fairly close to the South African border with Zimbabwe to the north, while to the south and east, it shared a long border with another black homeland, Gazankulu. It is now part of the ...

(Tshivenda) # Wolof # Yakut #

Yucatec Maya Yucatec Maya (; referred to by its speakers simply as Maya or as , is one of the 32 Mayan languages of the Mayan language family. Yucatec Maya is spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula and northern Belize. There is also a significant diasporic commu ...

(Yucateco) #

Zazaki Zaza or Zazaki (), is an Iranian language spoken primarily in eastern Turkey by the Zazas. The language is a part of the Zaza–Gorani language group of the northwestern group of the Iranian branch. The glossonym Zaza originated as a pejorativ ...

# Zhuang

Translation methodology

In April 2006, Google Translate launched with a statistical machine translation engine. Google Translate does not apply grammatical rules, since its algorithms are based on statistical or pattern analysis rather than traditional rule-based analysis. The system's original creator, Franz Josef Och, has criticized the effectiveness of rule-based

s in favor of statistical approaches. Original versions of Google Translate were based on a method called

, and more specifically, on research by Och who won the

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Ad ...

contest for speed machine translation in 2003. Och was the head of Google's machine translation group until leaving to join Human Longevity, Inc. in July 2014. Google Translate does not translate from one language to another (L1 → L2). Instead, it often translates first to English and then to the target language (L1 → EN → L2). However, because English, like all human languages, is ambiguous and depends on context, this can cause translation errors. For example, translating from French to Russian gives '' → you → '' OR '. If Google were using an unambiguous, artificial language as the intermediary, it would be '' → you → '' OR '' → thou → ''. Such a suffixing of words disambiguates their different meanings. Hence, publishing in English, using unambiguous words, providing context, using expressions such as "you all" may or may not make a better one-step translation depending on the target language. The following languages do not have a direct Google translation to or from English. These languages are translated through the indicated intermediate language (which in most cases is closely related to the desired language but more widely spoken) in addition to through English: * Belarusian ( be ↔ ru ↔ en ↔ other); *

( ca ↔ es ↔ en ↔ other); * Galician ( gl ↔ pt ↔ en ↔ other); * Haitian Creole ( ht ↔ fr ↔ en ↔ other); *

( ko ↔ ja ↔ en ↔ other); * Slovak ( sk ↔ cs ↔ en ↔ other); *

( uk ↔ ru ↔ en ↔ other); *

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' ur ↔ hi ↔ en ↔ other). According to Och, a solid base for developing a usable statistical machine translation system for a new pair of languages from scratch would consist of a bilingual

text corpus In linguistics, a corpus (plural ''corpora'') or text corpus is a language resource consisting of a large and structured set of texts (nowadays usually electronically stored and processed). In corpus linguistics, they are used to do statistical ...

(or parallel collection) of more than 150-200 million words, and two monolingual corpora each of more than a billion words. Statistical

model A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure. Models c ...

s from these data are then used to translate between those languages. To acquire this huge amount of linguistic data, Google used

and

documents and transcripts. The UN typically publishes documents in all six official UN languages, which has produced a very large 6-language corpus. Google representatives have been involved with domestic conferences in Japan where it has solicited bilingual data from researchers.Google was an official sponsor of the annual Computational Linguistics in Japan Conference (" Gengoshorigakkai") in 2007. Google also sent a delegate from its headquarters to the meeting of the members of the Computational Linguistic Society of Japan in March 2005, promising funding to researchers who would be willing to share text data. When Google Translate generates a translation proposal, it looks for

pattern A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated li ...

s in hundreds of millions of documents to help decide on the best translation. By detecting patterns in documents that have already been translated by human translators, Google Translate makes informed guesses (AI) as to what an appropriate translation should be. Before October 2007, for languages other than

and

, Google Translate was based on SYSTRAN, a software engine which is still used by several other online translation services such as Babel Fish (now defunct). From October 2007, Google Translate used proprietary, in-house technology based on

instead, before transitioning to neural machine translation.

Google Translate Community

Google has crowdsourcing features for volunteers to be a part of its "Translate Community", intended to help improve Google Translate's accuracy. Volunteers can select up to five languages to help improve translation; users can verify translated phrases and translate phrases in their languages to and from English, helping to improve the accuracy of translating more rare and complex phrases. In August 2016, a Google Crowdsource app was released for Android users, in which translation tasks are offered. There are three ways to contribute. First, Google will show a phrase that one should type in the translated version. Second, Google will show a proposed translation for a user to agree, disagree, or skip. Third, users can suggest translations for phrases where they think they can improve on Google's results. Tests in 44 languages show that the "suggest an edit" feature led to an improvement in a maximum of 40% of cases over four years.

Statistical machine translation

Although Google deployed a new system called neural machine translation for better quality translation, there are languages that still use the traditional translation method called statistical machine translation. It is a rule-based translation method that utilizes predictive algorithms to guess ways to translate texts in foreign languages. It aims to translate whole phrases rather than single words then gather overlapping phrases for translation. Moreover, it also analyzes bilingual text corpora to generate statistical model that translates texts from one language to another.

Google Neural Machine Translation

In September 2016, a research team at Google announced the development of the Google Neural Machine Translation system (GNMT) to increase fluency and accuracy in Google Translate and in November announced that Google Translate would switch to GNMT. Google Translate's

system uses a large end-to-end

artificial neural network Artificial neural networks (ANNs), usually simply called neural networks (NNs) or neural nets, are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains. An ANN is based on a collection of connected unit ...

that attempts to perform deep learning, in particular,

long short-term memory Long short-term memory (LSTM) is an artificial neural network used in the fields of artificial intelligence and deep learning. Unlike standard feedforward neural networks, LSTM has feedback connections. Such a recurrent neural network (RNN) ...

networks. GNMT improves the quality of translation over SMT in some instances because it uses an

example-based machine translation Example-based machine translation (EBMT) is a method of machine translation often characterized by its use of a bilingual corpus with parallel texts as its main knowledge base at run-time. It is essentially a translation by analogy and can be vi ...

(EBMT) method in which the system "learns from millions of examples." According to Google researchers, it translates "whole sentences at a time, rather than just piece by piece. It uses this broader context to help it figure out the most relevant translation, which it then rearranges and adjusts to be more like a human speaking with proper grammar". GNMT's "proposed architecture" of "system learning" has been implemented on over a hundred languages supported by Google Translate. With the end-to-end framework, Google states but does not demonstrate for most languages that "the system learns over time to create better, more natural translations." The GNMT network attempts interlingual machine translation, which encodes the "semantics of the sentence rather than simply memorizing phrase-to-phrase translations", and the system did not invent its own universal language, but uses "the commonality found in between many languages". GNMT was first enabled for eight languages: to and from English and Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish. In March 2017, it was enabled for Hindi, Russian and Vietnamese, followed by Bengali, Gujarati, Indonesian, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu in April.

Accuracy

Google Translate is not as reliable as human translation. When text is well-structured, written using formal language, with simple sentences, relating to formal topics for which training data is ample, it often produces conversions similar to human translations between English and a number of high-resource languages. Accuracy decreases for those languages when fewer of those conditions apply, for example when sentence length increases or the text uses familiar or literary language. For many other languages vis-à-vis English, it can produce the gist of text in those formal circumstances. Human evaluation from English to all 102 languages shows that the main idea of a text is conveyed more than 50% of the time for 35 languages. For 67 languages, a minimally comprehensible result is not achieved 50% of the time or greater. A few studies have evaluated Chinese, French, German, and Spanish to English, but no systematic human evaluation has been conducted from most Google Translate languages to English. Speculative language-to-language scores extrapolated from English-to-other measurements indicate that Google Translate will produce translation results that convey the gist of a text from one language to another more than half the time in about 1% of language pairs, where neither language is English. Research conducted in 2011 showed that Google Translate got a slightly higher score than the UCLA minimum score for the English Proficiency Exam. Due to its identical choice of words without considering the flexibility of choosing alternative words or expressions, it produces a relatively similar translation to human translation from the perspective of formality, referential cohesion, and conceptual cohesion. Moreover, a number of languages are translated into a sentence structure and sentence length similar to a human translation. Furthermore, Google carried out a test that required native speakers of each language to rate the translation on a scale between 0 and 6, and Google Translate scored 5.43 on average. When used as a dictionary to translate single words, Google Translate is highly inaccurate because it must guess between polysemic words. Among the top 100 words in the English language, which make up more than 50% of all written English, the average word has more than 15 senses, which makes the odds against a correct translation about 15 to 1 if each sense maps to a different word in the target language. Most common English words have at least two senses, which produces 50/50 odds in the likely case that the target language uses different words for those different senses. The odds are similar from other languages to English. Google Translate makes statistical guesses that raise the likelihood of producing the most frequent sense of a word, with the consequence that an accurate translation will be unobtainable in cases that do not match the majority or plurality

corpus Corpus is Latin for "body". It may refer to: Linguistics * Text corpus, in linguistics, a large and structured set of texts * Speech corpus, in linguistics, a large set of speech audio files * Corpus linguistics, a branch of linguistics Music * ...

occurrence. The accuracy of single-word predictions has not been measured for any language. Because almost all non-English language pairs pivot through English, the odds against obtaining accurate single-word translations from one non-English language to another can be estimated by multiplying the number of senses in the source language with the number of senses each of those terms have in English. When Google Translate does not have a word in its vocabulary, it makes up a result as part of its algorithm.

Limitations

Google Translate, like other automatic translation tools, has its limitations. The service limits the number of paragraphs and the range of technical terms that can be translated, and while it can help the reader understand the general content of a foreign language text, it does not always deliver accurate translations, and most times it tends to repeat verbatim the same word it is expected to translate. Grammatically, for example, Google Translate struggles to differentiate between ''imperfect'' and ''perfect''

aspect Aspect or Aspects may refer to: Entertainment * ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art * Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company * Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England * ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...

s in Romance languages so habitual and continuous acts in the past often become single ''historical'' events. Although seemingly pedantic, this can often lead to incorrect results (to a native speaker of for example French and Spanish) which would have been avoided by a human translator. Knowledge of the '' subjunctive mood'' is virtually non-existent. Moreover, the formal second person () is often chosen, whatever the context or accepted usage. Since its English reference material contains only "you" forms, it has difficulty translating a language with "you all" or formal "you" variations. Due to differences between languages in investment, research, and the extent of digital resources, the accuracy of Google Translate varies greatly among languages. Some languages produce better results than others. Most languages from Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, tend to score poorly in relation to the scores of many well-financed European languages, Afrikaans and Chinese being the high-scoring exceptions from their continents. No languages indigenous to Australia are included within Google Translate. Higher scores for European can be partially attributed to the Europarl Corpus, a trove of documents from the

that have been professionally translated by the mandate of the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

into as many as 21 languages. A 2010 analysis indicated that French to English translation is relatively accurate, and 2011 and 2012 analyses showed that Italian to English translation is relatively accurate as well. However, if the source text is shorter, rule-based machine translations often perform better; this effect is particularly evident in Chinese to English translations. While edits of translations may be submitted, in Chinese specifically one cannot edit sentences as a whole. Instead, one must edit sometimes arbitrary sets of characters, leading to incorrect edits. A good example is Russian-to-English. Formerly one would use Google Translate to make a draft and then use a dictionary and common sense to correct the numerous mistakes. As of early 2018 Translate is sufficiently accurate to make the Russian Wikipedia accessible to those who can read English. The quality of Translate can be checked by adding it as an extension to Chrome or Firefox and applying it to the left language links of any Wikipedia article. It can be used as a dictionary by typing in words. One can translate from a book by using a scanner and an OCR like Google Drive, but this takes about five minutes per page. In its Written Words Translation function, there is a word limit on the amount of text that can be translated at once. Therefore, long text should be transferred to a document form and translated through its Document Translate function. Moreover, like all machine translation programs, Google Translate struggles with polysemy (the multiple meanings a word may have) and

multiword expression A multiword expression (MWE), also called phraseme, is a lexeme-like unit made up of a sequence of two or more lexemes that has properties that are not predictable from the properties of the individual lexemes or their normal mode of combination. MW ...

s (terms that have meanings that cannot be understood or translated by analyzing the individual word units that compose them). A word in a foreign language might have two different meanings in the translated language. This might lead to mistranslations. Additionally, grammatical errors remain a major limitation to the accuracy of Google Translate. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation (IJLLT) 2(3):196-200, 2019. Retrieved August 26, 2020

Open-source licenses and components

Irish language data from

Foras na Gaeilge (, " Irish Institute"; ) is a public body responsible for the promotion of the Irish language throughout the island of Ireland, including both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. It was set up on 2 December 1999, assuming the role ...

's New English-Irish Dictionary (English database designed and developed for Foras na Gaeilge by Lexicography MasterClass Ltd.) Welsh language data from Gweiadur by Gwerin. Certain content is copyright

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

USA. Some phrase translations come from

Wikitravel Wikitravel is a web-based collaborative travel guide based on the wiki format and owned by Internet Brands. It was most active from 2003 through 2012, when most of its editing community left and brought their contributions to the nonprofit Wi ...

Reviews

Shortly after launching the translation service for the first time, Google won an international competition for English–Arabic and English–Chinese machine translation.

Translation mistakes and oddities

Since Google Translate used statistical matching to translate, translated text can often include apparently nonsensical and obvious errors, often swapping common terms for similar but nonequivalent common terms in the other language, as well as inverting sentence meaning. Novelty websites like Bad Translator and Translation Party have utilized the service to produce humorous text by translating back and forth between multiple languages, similar to the children's game

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

References

External links

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Translate Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

Internet properties established in 2006 Machine translation software Natural language processing software Products introduced in 2006 Translation websites