Google adds Hindi to list of languages supported by its Translate feature

Google has announced the addition of ten new languages to its Google Translate feature, bringing the total  to 23. The newcomers are Hindi, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish. The existing languages include English, Chinese (Simplified, Traditional), Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Google Translate is a service provided by Google Inc. to translate a section of text, or a webpage, into another language, with limits to the number of paragraphs, or range of technical terms, translated. For some languages, users are asked for alternate translations, such as for technical terms, to be included for future updates to the translation process.

Unlike other translation services such as Babel Fish, AOL, and Yahoo which use SYSTRAN, Google uses its own translation software.

Besides translating the typed-out text with the help of this service, the users can also make cross-language searches; translate Web site text to any of the languages that the service supports. Moreover, there is a "Detect Language" feature that will automatically identify the language of the text the user is trying to translate.

Google also provides a Google Translate My Page gadget, which when embedded onto a Web page, provides immediate translation to the new languages automatically. (See: Google brings YouTube to India)

Google Translate, like other automatic translation tools, has its limitations. While it can help the reader to understand the general content of a foreign language text, it does not deliver accurate translations and does not produce publication-standard content, for example it often translates words out of context and is deliberately not applying any grammatical rules.

Google is bullish on its growth prospects in India, and the availability of Hindi in its translation application will give a boost to search engine's use. Last year, Google had launched an India-serving innovation platform, Google India Labs, and two India facing products- Google Local Search and Google Local Business Centre. Only a few days back, it launched the country-specific version of video-sharing site YouTube. (See: Google launches India Labs, local search and local business centre)