Google Translate now supports 103 languages after the company's announcement of the additional 13 languages to the platform.
The most recent update adds support for Amharic (the second most widely spoken Semitic language after Arabic), Corsican (used on the French island of Corsica and Napoleon's first language), Frisian (the native language of more than half of Netherlands' Friesland province), Kyrgyz (used in Kyrgyzstan), Hawaiian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Luxembourgish, Samoan (which uses only 14 letters), Scots Gaelic, Shona, Sindhi, Pashto and Xhosa.
While some of these are lesser-used in the world compared to others, such as Engish and Chinese, having these languages on Google Translate widens the reach of the service.
In fact, Google Translate says that it now caters to 99 percent of the global online population, which is a huge achievement for the service that was launched in April 2006.
The idea to develop Google Translate was first given form back in 2004, when Google co-founder Sergey Brin became immensely frustrated with translation software that the company was licensing. Brin ran an email written in Korean through the software, and the translation read "The sliced raw fish shoes it wishes. Google green onion thing!"
The initial Google Translate platform utilized machine-learning based translation systems to convert text between English, Chinese, Arabic and Russian. Today, the 103-language platform utilizes human volunteers in addition to machine learning to ensure the accuracy of the translations being churned out by Google Translate.
Google, however, did not reach its current success with Google Translate all by itself. It also had the help of the service's users in the Translate Community that aided in the improvement of the service and the addition of new languages. Figures reveal that more than 3 million people have added about 200 million translations to the platform's database.
Google has also updated its breakdown page for Google Translate, showing the six ways that users can utilize the service and which languages are supported by each one.
• Type, by typing into the keyboard
• Talk, to have a bilingual conversation
• Snap, to translate images containing text
• See, to see instant translations using a smartphone camera
• Write, by drawing characters and letters
• Offline, to get a translation without an Internet connection
