Google Translate

Google Translate adds five new languages, first expansion in four years

Ben Schoon | Feb 26 2020 - 9:57 am PT

Google Translate may not always give a perfect translation between different tongues, but it’s still a tool millions of people rely on daily. Today, Google is announcing that Translate is adding five new languages, it’s first expansion in the past few years.

Starting today, Google Translate supports five new languages — Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen, and Uyghur. These languages are spoken in Rwanda, Odisha, modern Tatarstan/Siberia, Turkmenistan, and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China respectively with over 75 million speakers worldwide combined.

Google says that these new languages support both text and website translations, with Kinyarwanda, Tatar, and Uyghur specifically supporting virtual keyboard input. In the GIF below, Google translates the phrase “Enable everyone, everywhere to understand the world and express themselves across languages.”

With this latest addition, Translate supports 108 languages in total.

Translate learns from existing translations, which are most often found on the web. Languages without a lot of web content have traditionally been challenging to translate, but through advancements in our machine learning technology, coupled with active involvement of the Google Translate Community, we’ve added support for five languages: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. These languages, spoken by more than 75 million people worldwide, are the first languages we’ve added to Google Translate in four years, and expand the capabilities of Google Translate to 108 languages.

Translate supports both text translation and website translation for each of these languages. In addition, Translate supports virtual keyboard input for Kinyarwanda, Tatar and Uyghur. Below you can see our team motto, “Enable everyone, everywhere to understand the world and express themselves across languages,” translated into the five new languages.