Google Data

People use Google Translate a whole lot—we translate over 100 billion words a day! However, in the past, our translation systems have generally been better at making sense of government and business documents than in helping people casually communicate.

But that’s all changing thanks to people like you and a recent update we rolled out. So the next time you translate informal speech in Google Translate, you might just find a better translation. Here’s an example of how it’s improved:

So how exactly are people like you impacting Google Translate? Well, with Translate Community hundreds of thousands of people have generously donated their time in service of cross-language communication. It’s fun and really easy: tell us what languages you speak; choose to either see a phrase and translate it on your own or correct current translations already in the system. Based on translations from the community, we will incorporate corrections and over time learn the language a little better.

There’s a whole lot more work to do, but with more help from everyday people through Translate Community, we can continue to improve the 90 languages we already speak and keep adding more.

Posted by Aaron Babst, Community Program Manager, Google Translate

During the Translate Community: Google I/O Challenge nearly 2.5 million phrases or about 12 million words were translated and validated by participants during Google I/O and beyond. From Afrikaans to Zulu, we saw approximately 75,000 people representin…

For the last 10 months, multilingual users around the world have flocked to the Google Translate Community to help improve their language(s) on Google Translate through translating and validating common phrases.

Since launch, we’ve seen some amazing contributions, from Kyrgyz speakers who are getting us closer to adding their language to Google Translate, to Bengali speakers who organized 80 translate-a-thon events, significantly increasing translation quality for their language.

Translate Community: Google I/O Challenge (May 26 – June 5, 2015)
Now, we’re challenging all Google I/O attendees (onsite and offsite!) to represent your language(s) during the Translate Community: I/O Challenge running from May 26 to June 5, 2015. Our goal is to reach over 5 million total contributions during the challenge.

You can make meaningful contributions in just a few minutes, and remember that all contributions matter—we encourage you to spread the word in your local community and amongst your friends and family to increase the contributions for your language(s). More contributions mean higher quality translations for your language(s), or helping your language(s) become supported on Google Translate, if they aren’t yet.

To get started:

• Sign up in the new version of Translate Community at g.co/translate/io
• Set your language(s) and contribute with as many high-quality translations / validations you have time for
• Invite others to join the challenge and show support for your language on social with the official #io15 & #loveyourlanguage hashtags

You can follow which languages are getting the most contributions on our Google+ page, where we’ll post updates on who’s leading the way throughout the challenge. Besides helping your language rise to the top of our leaderboard, if you’re one of the top high-quality contributors, you’ll get a Google Translate certificate for your linguistic legerdemain and might even get a shoutout on our social channels.

Built with Polymer
In the spirit of Google I/O, we recently released a new version of the Translate Community using Polymer. In addition to supporting your language, be one of the first to try out the new look of Translate Community.

This new version takes advantage of Web Components in Polymer. We’re one of the first teams at Google to use Polymer this way—it’s now much easier to add new features like badges, upgrade our design, and ensure it works great on smartphones and tablets, in addition to desktop. We’re looking forward to leading the way by offering our community a fun and engaging place to make a positive impact.

Posted by Aaron Babst, Google Translate, Community Program Manager

Have you ever slashed the wind with your friends? Attached a gold leaf to the back of a Buddha statue? Or caught the moon in your hands?

You probably have, but if you don’t speak Vietnamese, Thai or Bengali you probably called it something else. These are some phrases Google Translate learned to understand a little better during the first of a series of translate-a-thons held over the last month in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand, part of a “Love your Language” project to get languages better represented on the Web. (For those playing at home, the Vietnamese call it slashing the wind when they gossip, the Thais say they attach a gold leaf to the back of a Buddha statue when they do something selfless, and Bengalis say they’ve caught the moon in their hand when they receive something rare).

Google Translate provides free translation in 90 languages, but for those that don’t have much presence on the Web – like Myanmar, Bengali, Vietnamese and Thai – it could use a little help.

This is where the Translate Community tool and passionate language speakers can make a difference. By letting people validate, match, rate and supply translations, it can boost the translation of these languages online for millions of people.

Try it out yourself at translate.google.com/community

Since kicking off on International Mother Tongue Day (21 Feb), more than 50,000 people have come together, online and off, to use this tool to improve translations for Bengali, Myanmar, Vietnamese and Thai. They gathered at startup hubs in Yangon and university campuses in Vietnam, Bangladesh and Thailand.

This gentleman showed up at Phandeeyar Innovation Hub in Yangon with a handwritten list of phrases he wanted Google to get right.

So far, more than 100 translate-a-thons have been held and more than 10 million words have been added. That’s 17 times more words than Tolstoy used for War and Peace, 12 times the number of words in the English version of the Bible.

It’s made a huge difference. The quality of Bengali translations are now twice as good as they were before human review. While in Thailand, Google Translate learned more Thai in seven days with the help of volunteers than in all of 2014.

The following graph show the spike in Translate Community inputs over the last month, March 26 saw a major spike for Bangladesh Independence day, setting a new record for the largest volume of translations contributed in 24 hours.

Google Translate Community surfaces a random selection of popular words and phrases that users are asking Google Translate to explain in their language — from music lyrics, to local recipes, to human rights.

Teaching Google Vietnamese at the University of Technology in Ho Chi Minh City

Teaching Google Vietnamese at the University of Technology in Ho Chi Minh City We sometimes think the offline world and online world are separate. They’re not. A huge thank you to all the people that joined us for the Love your Language series of events. Your efforts have made it easier for people from downtown Dhaka to upcountry Thailand to access the web in a language they understand.

Teaching Thai at Siam University International College

And the improvements don’t need to stop. By joining the Translate Community you can join us in making the web work better for everyone — no matter what language you speak.

Posted by Svetlana Kelman, Program Manager, Google Translate
(Cross-posted from the Asia Pacific Blog)

February 21 marks the 15th anniversary of the UNESCO declaration of International Mother Language Day. Since then each Mother Language Day has promoted the preservation and protection of the approximately 7,000 languages that are spoken throughout the …

Often the hardest part of traveling is navigating the local language. If you’ve ever asked for “pain” in Paris and gotten funny looks, confused “embarazada” with “embarrassed” in Mexico, or stumbled over pronunciation pretty much anywhere, you know the feeling. Now Google Translate can be your guide in new ways. We’ve updated the Translate app on Android and iOS to transform your mobile device into an even more powerful translation tool.

Instant translation with Word Lens
The Translate app already lets you use camera mode to snap a photo of text and get a translation for it in 36 languages. Now, we’re taking it to the next level and letting you instantly translate text using your camera—so it’s way easier to navigate street signs in the Italian countryside or decide what to order off a Barcelona menu. While using the Translate app, just point your camera at a sign or text and you’ll see the translated text overlaid on your screen—even if you don’t have an Internet or data connection.

This instant translation currently works for translation from English to and from French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, and we’re working to expand to more languages. 

Have an easier conversation using the Translate app

When talking with someone in an unfamiliar language, conversations can… get… realllllllly… sloowwww. While we’ve had real-time conversation mode on Android since 2013, our new update makes the conversation flow faster and more naturally.

Starting today, simply tap the mic to start speaking in a selected language, then tap the mic again, and the Google Translate app will automatically recognize which of the two languages are being spoken, letting you have a more fluid conversation. For the rest of the conversation, you won’t need to tap the mic again—it’ll be ready as you need it. Asking for directions to the Rive Gauche, ordering bacalhau in Lisbon, or chatting with your grandmother in her native Spanish just got a lot faster.

These updates will be coming to both Android and iOS, rolling out over the next few days. This is the first time some of these advanced features, like camera translations and conversation mode, will be available for iOS users.

More than 500 million people use Google Translate every month, making more than 1 billion translations a day to more easily communicate and access information across languages. Today’s updates take us one step closer to turning your phone into a universal translator and to a world where language is no longer a barrier to discovering information or connecting with each other.

Posted by Barak Turovsky, Product Lead, Google Translate

Cross-posted on the Inside Search Blog

• Chichewa (Chinyanja) is spoken by 12 million people in Malawi and surrounding countries. It is one of 55 languages used in the greetings that now travel the galaxy on the Voyager interstellar probes.
• Malagasy is spoken by 18 million people in Madagascar, where it is the national language. It is one of only a few languages which puts the verb first in sentences, followed by the object and then the subject.
• Sesotho has 6 million native speakers. It is the national language of Lesotho and one of 11 official languages in South Africa.

• Malayalam (മലയാളം), with 38 million native speakers, is a major language in India and one of that country’s 6 classical languages. It’s been one of the most-requested languages, so we are especially excited to add Malayalam support!
• Myanmar (Burmese, မြန်မာစာ) is the official language of Myanmar with 33 million native speakers. Myanmar language has been in the works for a long time as it’s a challenging language for automatic translation, both from language structure and font encoding perspectives. While our system understands different Myanmar inputs, we encourage the use of open standards and therefore only output Myanmar translations in Unicode.
• Sinhala (සිංහල) is one of the official languages of Sri Lanka and natively spoken by 16 million people. In September the local community in Sri Lanka organized Sinhala Translate Week, and since then, participants have contributed tens of thousands of translations to our system. We’re happy to be able to release Sinhala as one of the new languages today!
• Sundanese (Basa Sunda) is spoken on the island of Java in Indonesia by 39 million people. While Sundanese does have its own script, it is today commonly written using the Latin alphabet, which is what our system uses.

• Tajik (Тоҷикӣ), a close relative to modern Persian, is spoken by more than 4 million people in Tajikistan and beyond.
• Uzbek (Oʻzbek tili) is spoken by 25 million people in Uzbekistan. In addition to receiving Uzbek community support, we’ve incorporated the Uzbek dictionary by Shavkat Butaev into our system.

When you’re browsing the web, you might come across a page where some of the text is in a different language. With the new update to the Google Translate Chrome extension, you can translate just that piece of text, without worrying about the rest of th…

Cross-posted from the Inside Search Blog

Have you ever been in that frustrating situation where you meet someone — yet can’t communicate because you don’t speak each other’s language? Well, hopefully communication can become a whole lot easier with the launch of the new Google Translate app for Android. The app now features faster and simpler speech translation, additional language support, and a sleek new look.

Let’s say you’re taking your first vacation abroad and decide to head to Spain. The only problem? You don’t speak Spanish. Now — equipped with just your Android device — you can have a fully translated back-and-forth conversation from Spanish to English with very little work. All you need to do is open up your Translate app and press the microphone icon. We’ve also added gesture support, so with a simple turn of the screen, you can switch back and forth between languages. This makes ordering food in that authentic Tapas restaurant a whole lot easier!

More translate options for more languages

With today’s updated Translate app, we also offer more language support for our handwriting feature, allowing you to directly write words in Hebrew, Greek, Javanese, and Esperanto on your device screen and have them translated on the fly. You can also use our camera translation feature to take a photo of written text with your Android device and highlight which words you’d like to be translated, now including additional language support for Malay and Ukranian.

We hope Google Translate can continue to help break down more language barriers in easier ways, all on your mobile device. We’ll be rolling the update out via the Google Play Store today and tomorrow. We hope you give it a whirl!

Posted by Matthew Gaba, Product Manager

Last year we brought handwriting input to Google Translate for Android. Earlier this year, we updated Google Input Tools on desktop by adding new virtual keyboards, input method editors, and transliteration input tools. Today, we take our input tools one step further, by bringing handwriting input to the Google Translate homepage.