Google learns 10 new languages

Google has added capabilities for 10 new languages to its Google Translate service.

The addition of Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish brings the total number of languages to 23.

The service now has the option to translate text and web pages, as well as perform cross-language searches between any two languages in the list.

Jeff Chin, a product manager for Google, wrote in the company's official blog: "For example, we now support Chinese translation to/from any of our languages (e.g. Chinese to French).

"So for those of you who will be following or attending the Olympics in Beijing, you'll be able to more easily find and access content from local sources."

Google has also added a 'Detect Language' option to help automatically identify the language of the text being translated. Chin admitted, however, that the system is not perfect.

"Machine translation is a hard problem, but it plays an important role in helping people access content they might otherwise be unable to read," he said.

A 'Suggest a Better Translation' feature allows users to correct inaccurate translations in an effort to refine the service.

See also:

Google pips Yahoo to top web spot

YouTube pushes search giant's network ahead  19 May 2008

Verizon chooses Linux over Google

Android loses out to LiMo Foundation  16 May 2008

Facebook says 'hola' to Spanish users

German and French versions also in the pipeline  08 Feb 2008

Battle between Google and Microsoft intensifies

2008 the year of broadband video and web advertising  20 Dec 2007

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