Newsletter
Google is working on making the Internet more accessible to users in India by bringing down the language barriers with a new update to Google Translate, as well as by adding support for 11 additional Indian languages to Gboard. Starting today, Google Translate will rely on the search engine giant’s new Neural Machine Translation technology for translating English into nine widely used Indian languages, and users in India will be able to take advantage of the new tool through the Translate feature that’s integrated into Google Chrome.
According to Google, although there are more than 400 million Internet users in India today, only around one-fifth of the population is fluent in English, meaning that numerous Indians are faced with significant language barriers when accessing the Internet. Google intends to bring these barriers down by implementing its new Neural Machine Translation technology into Google Translate. Unlike the previous translate system, Neural Machine Translation is capable of translating full sentences at a time as opposed to translating sentence fragments. This gives Google Translate more contextual awareness and allows for more accurate translations adjusted to the human speech with proper grammar. With Neural Machine Translation, Google Translate now supports the translation of the English language into nine Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Malayalam, and Kannada. Google Translate with Neural Machine Translation is now baked into Google Chrome, giving users in India access to more accurate translations on the web. Additionally, starting today Google will automatically translate local reviews on Google Maps for both desktop and mobile platforms, and lastly, the company is bringing the Rajpal & Sons Hindi dictionary straight into Google Search in collaboration with the Oxford University Press.
As for the mobile side of things, Google is releasing a new update to its Gboard Android application to include 11 additional Indian languages on top of the 11 languages that are already supported, bringing the number up to a total of 22 Indian languages featuring prediction and auto-correct options, as well as transliteration support allowing users to write in their native languages by spelling words phonetically using the QWERTY alphabet. Gboard users can also access Google Translate right from the keyboard by tapping the “G” button, and furthermore, the latest Gboard update introduces new text editing tools, extra resizing and repositioning options, and improvements to text prediction accuracy, the Alphabet-owned company said.
