Google Translate Continues to Add Languages
The latest languages Google Translate supports are Canadian French and Inuktut, which are spoken in Canada and are the first Indigenous languages for Google Translate. Canada is getting quite an upgrade on Google Translate.
Google Translate has previously announced its commitment to supporting the 1000 most spoken languages globally. Up to this month, Wikipedia reports that Google Translate supports 244 languages. The number has just increased with these two new additions.
There are over 7 million French Canadian speakers in Canada. Surprisingly, Canadian French was not supported sooner, but it is a welcome addition for many, I am sure.
Google put in quite the effort to add Inuktut to their supported languages. Nunatsiaq News reports that there are about 40,000 Inuktut speakers. Kierstin Williams, with Nunatsiaq News, has written a very interesting article about the process Google went through to add this language to their service. The link to her article is here: Google Translate adds Inuktut language to its online service
While Google may be a long way off from 1000 languages at this time, it is impressive to see what effort they are taking to support languages not only for millions of people but also for much smaller locales. Google should be commended for such work as I doubt many of the languages in this effort will be generating a downstream profit for the company, but rather for the good of the world to support communication among all, and to not lose long-built cultures.
