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Google Translate
Google Translate logo.svg
Google Translate screenshot.png
Google Translate website homepage
Type of site
Neural machine translation
Available in 133 languages; see below
Owner Google
Commercial Yes
Registration Optional
Users Over 600 million people daily
Launched April 28, 2006; 17 years ago (2006-04-28) (as statistical machine translation)
November 15, 2016; 7 years ago (2016-11-15) (as neural machine translation)
Current status Active

Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. As of 2022, Google Translate supports 133 languages at various levels; it claimed over 500 million total users as of April 2016, with more than 100 billion words translated daily, after the company stated in May 2013 that it served over 200 million people daily.

Launched in April 2006 as a statistical machine translation service, it used United Nations and European Parliament documents and transcripts to gather linguistic data. Rather than translating languages directly, it first translates text to English and then pivots to the target language in most of the language combinations it posits in its grid, with a few exceptions including Catalan–Spanish. During a translation, it looks for patterns in millions of documents to help decide which words to choose and how to arrange them in the target language. Its accuracy, which has been criticized on several occasions, has been measured to vary greatly across languages. In November 2016, Google announced that Google Translate would switch to a neural machine translation engine – Google Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) – which translates "whole sentences at a time, rather than just piece by piece. It uses this broader context to help it figure out the most relevant translation, which it then rearranges and adjusts to be more like a human speaking with proper grammar".

Functions

Google Translate can translate multiple forms of text and media, which includes text, speech, and text within still or moving images. Specifically, its functions include:

  • Written Words Translation: a function that translates written words or text to a foreign language.
  • Website Translation: a function that translates a whole webpage to selected languages.
  • Document Translation: a function that translates a document uploaded by the users to selected languages. The documents should be in the form of: .doc, .docx, .odf, .pdf, .ppt, .pptx, .ps, .rtf, .txt, .xls, .xlsx.
  • Speech Translation: a function that instantly translates spoken language into the selected foreign language.
  • Mobile App Translation: in 2018, Google introduced its new Google Translate feature called "Tap to Translate", which made instant translation accessible inside any app without exiting or switching it.
  • Image Translation: a function that identifies text in a picture taken by the users and translates text on the screen instantly by images.
  • Handwritten Translation: a function that translates language that are handwritten on the phone screen or drawn on a virtual keyboard without the support of a keyboard.
  • Bilingual Conversation Translation: a function that translates conversations in multiple languages.
  • Transcription: a function that transcribes speech in different languages.

For most of its features, Google Translate provides the pronunciation, dictionary, and listening to translation. Additionally, Google Translate has introduced its own Translate app, so translation is available with a mobile phone in offline mode.

Features

Web interface

Google Translate produces approximations across languages of multiple forms of text and media, including text, speech, websites, or text on display in still or live video images. For some languages, Google Translate can synthesize speech from text, and in certain pairs it is possible to highlight specific corresponding words and phrases between the source and target text. Results are sometimes shown with dictional information below the translation box, but it is not a dictionary and has been shown to invent translations in all languages for words it does not recognize. If "Detect language" is selected, text in an unknown language can be automatically identified. In the web interface, users can suggest alternate translations, such as for technical terms, or correct mistakes. These suggestions may be included in future updates to the translation process. If a user enters a URL in the source text, Google Translate will produce a hyperlink to a machine translation of the website. Users can save translation proposals in a "phrasebook" for later use, and a shareable URL is generated for each translation. For some languages, text can be entered via an on-screen keyboard, through handwriting recognition, or speech recognition. It is possible to enter searches in a source language that are first translated to a destination language allowing one to browse and interpret results from the selected destination language in the source language.

Texts written in the Arabic, Cyrillic, Devanagari and Greek scripts can be transliterated automatically from phonetic equivalents written in the Latin alphabet. The browser version of Google Translate provides the option to show phonetic equivalents of text translated from Japanese to English. The same option is not available on the paid API version.

Google English accent map
Accent of English that the "text-to-speech" audio of Google Translate of each country uses:      British (Received Pronunciation) (female)      General American (female)      General Australian (female)      Indian (female)      No Google translate service

Many of the more popular languages have a "text-to-speech" audio function that is able to read back a text in that language, up to several hundred words or so. In the case of pluricentric languages, the accent depends on the region: for English, in the Americas, most of the Asia-Pacific and Western Asia, the audio uses a female General American accent, whereas in Europe, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Guyana and all other parts of the world, a female British (Received Pronunciation) accent is used, except for a special General Australian accent used in Australia, New Zealand and Norfolk Island, and an Indian English accent used in India; for Spanish, in the Americas, a Latin American accent is used, while in other parts of the world, a Castilian accent is used; for Portuguese, a São Paulo accent is used around the world, except in Portugal, where their native accent is used instead; for French, a Quebec accent is used in Canada, while in other parts of the world, a standard European accent is used; for Bengali, a male Bangladeshi accent is used, except in India, where a special female Indian Bengali accent is used instead. Until March 2023, some less widely spoken languages used the open-source eSpeak synthesizer for their speech; producing a robotic, awkward voice that may be difficult to understand.

Browser integration

Google Translate is available in some web browsers as an optional downloadable extension that can run the translation engine, which allow right-click command access to the translation service. In February 2010, Google Translate was integrated into the Google Chrome browser by default, for optional automatic webpage translation.

Mobile app

The Google Translate app for Android and iOS supports 133 languages and can propose translations for 37 languages via photo, 32 via voice in "conversation mode", and 27 via live video imagery in "augmented reality mode".

The Android app was released in January 2010, and for iOS on February 8, 2011, after an HTML5 web application was released for iOS users in August 2008. The Android app is compatible with devices running at least Android 2.1, while the iOS app is compatible with iPod Touches, iPads, and iPhones updated to iOS 7.0+.

A January 2011 Android version experimented with a "Conversation Mode" that aims to allow users to communicate fluidly with a nearby person in another language. Originally limited to English and Spanish, the feature received support for 12 new languages, still in testing, the following October.

The 'Camera input' functionality allows users to take a photograph of a document, signboard, etc. Google Translate recognises the text from the image using optical character recognition (OCR) technology and gives the translation. Camera input is not available for all languages.

In January 2015, the apps gained the ability to propose translations of physical signs in real time using the device's camera, as a result of Google's acquisition of the Word Lens app. The original January launch only supported seven languages, but a July update added support for 20 new languages, with the release of a new implementation that utilizes convolutional neural networks, and also enhanced the speed and quality of Conversation Mode translations (augmented reality). The feature was subsequently renamed Instant Camera. The technology underlying Instant Camera combines image processing and optical character recognition, then attempts to produce cross-language equivalents using standard Google Translate estimations for the text as it is perceived.

On May 11, 2016, Google introduced Tap to Translate for Google Translate for Android. Upon highlighting text in an app that is in a foreign language, Translate will pop up inside of the app and offer translations.

API

On May 26, 2011, Google announced that the Google Translate API for software developers had been deprecated and would cease functioning. The Translate API page stated the reason as "substantial economic burden caused by extensive abuse" with an end date set for December 1, 2011. In response to public pressure, Google announced in June 2011 that the API would continue to be available as a paid service.

Because the API was used in numerous third-party websites and apps, the original decision to deprecate it led some developers to criticize Google and question the viability of using Google APIs in their products.

Google Assistant

Google Translate also provides translations for Google Assistant and the devices that Google Assistant runs on such as Google Nest and Pixel Buds.

Supported languages

As of March 2024, the following 133 languages are supported by Google Translate:

Language Designation on
Google Translate
Support added Supports
voice input?
Supports
text-to-speech?
Afrikaans 2009 yes yes
Albanian 2009 yes yes
Amharic 2016 yes no
Arabic 2006 yes yes
Armenian 2010 yes no
Assamese 2022 no no
Aymara 2022 no no
Azerbaijani 2010 yes no
Bambara 2022 no no
Basque 2010 yes no
Belarusian 2009 no no
Bengali 2011 yes yes
Bhojpuri 2022 no no
Bosnian 2013 no yes
Bulgarian 2008 yes yes
Burmese Myanmar (Burmese) 2014 yes yes
Catalan 2006 yes yes
Cebuano 2013 no no
Chewa Chichewa 2014 no no
Chinese (Simplified) 2006 yes yes
Chinese (Traditional) 2007 yes yes
Corsican 2016 no no
Croatian 2006 yes yes
Czech 2006 yes yes
Danish 2006 yes yes
Dhivehi Divehi 2022 no no
Dogri 2022 no no
Dutch 2006 yes yes
English 2006 yes yes
Esperanto 2012 no no
Estonian 2009 yes yes
Ewe 2022 no no
Filipino (Tagalog) Filipino 2008 yes yes
Finnish 2006 yes yes
French 2006 yes yes
Galician 2009 yes no
Georgian 2010 yes no
German 2006 yes yes
Goan Konkani 2022 no no
Greek 2006 yes yes
Guarani 2022 no no
Gujarati 2011 yes yes
Haitian Creole 2010 no no
Hausa 2013 no no
Hawaiian 2016 no no
Hebrew 2006 yes yes
Hindi 2006 yes yes
Hmong 2013 no no
Hungarian 2006 yes yes
Icelandic 2006 yes yes
Igbo 2013 no no
Ilocano 2022 no no
Iloko Ilocano 2022 no no
Indonesian 2006 yes yes
Irish 2009 no no
Italian 2006 yes yes
Japanese 2006 yes yes
Javanese 2013 yes yes
Kannada 2011 yes yes
Kazakh 2014 yes no
Khmer 2013 yes yes
Kinyarwanda 2020 yes no
Konkani 2022 no no
Korean 2006 yes yes
Krio 2022 no no
Kurdish (Kurmanji) 2016 no no
Kurdish (Sorani) 2022 no no
Kyrgyz 2016 no no
Lao 2012 yes no
Latin 2010 no yes
Latvian 2008 yes yes
Lingala 2022 no no
Lithuanian 2008 yes no
Luganda 2022 no no
Luxembourgish 2016 no no
Macedonian 2009 yes no
Maithili 2022 no no
Malagasy 2014 no no
Malay 2009 yes yes
Malayalam 2014 yes yes
Maldivian Dhivehi 2022 no no
Maltese 2009 no no
Māori Maori 2013 no no
Marathi 2013 yes yes
Meitei Meiteilon (Manipuri) 2022 no no
Mizo 2022 no no
Mongolian 2013 yes no
Nepali 2013 yes yes
Northern Sotho Sepedi 2022 yes no
Norwegian (Bokmål) Norwegian 2006 yes yes
Odia Odia (Oriya) 2020 no no
Oromo 2022 no no
Pashto 2016 no no
Persian 2009 yes no
Polish 2006 yes yes
Portuguese 2006 yes yes
Punjabi (Gurmukhi) Punjabi 2013 yes no
Romanian 2006 yes yes
Russian 2006 yes yes
Samoan 2016 no no
Sanskrit 2022 no no
Scottish Gaelic Scots Gaelic 2016 no no
Serbian 2008 yes yes
Shona 2016 no no
Sindhi 2016 no no
Sinhala 2014 yes yes
Slovak 2006 yes yes
Slovene Slovenian 2008 yes no
Somali 2013 no no
Sotho Sesotho 2014 yes no
Southern Quechua Quechua 2022 no no
Spanish 2006 yes yes
Sundanese 2014 yes yes
Swahili 2009 yes yes
Swedish 2006 yes yes
Tagalog 2022 yes yes
Tajik 2014 no no
Tamil 2011 yes yes
Tatar 2020 no no
Telugu 2011 yes yes
Thai 2006 yes yes
Tigrinya 2022 no no
Tsonga 2022 yes no
Turkish 2006 yes yes
Turkmen 2020 no no
Twi 2022 no no
Ukrainian 2006 yes yes
Urdu 2010 yes yes
Uyghur 2020 no no
Uzbek 2014 yes no
Vietnamese 2006 yes yes
Welsh 2009 no no
West Frisian Frisian 2016 no no
Xhosa 2016 yes no
Yiddish 2009 no no
Yoruba 2013 no no
Zulu 2013 yes no

See also

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