Most of us will probably have used Google’s Translate service at some point, and now Google has shared some details on how popular their language translate service has become.
According to Google, the service is used by more than 200 million people per month, and the service translates the equivalent text that can be found in more than 1 million books every day.
The Evolution of Google Translate
In 2001, Google started providing a service that could translate eight languages to and from English. It used what was then state-of-the-art commercial machine translation (MT), but the translation quality wasn’t very good, and it didn’t improve much in those first few years. In 2003, a few Google engineers decided to ramp up the translation quality and tackle more languages. That’s when I got involved. I was working as a researcher on DARPA projects looking at a new approach to machine translation—learning from data—which held the promise of much better translation quality. I got a phone call from those Googlers who convinced me (I was skeptical!) that this data-driven approach might work at Google scale.
Google Translate has come a long way since its inception. Initially, the service could only handle translations between eight languages and English. The early versions of the service relied on rule-based machine translation, which often resulted in awkward and inaccurate translations. However, the turning point came in 2003 when Google engineers decided to adopt a data-driven approach to improve translation quality. This shift marked the beginning of significant advancements in the service.
Current Capabilities and Future Prospects
Today, Google Translate can translate websites and text in more than 64 different languages. This includes widely spoken languages like Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic, as well as less commonly spoken languages such as Icelandic and Swahili. The service is not just limited to text; it can also translate spoken words, images, and even real-time video through its mobile app. This makes it an invaluable tool for travelers, businesses, and anyone needing to bridge language barriers quickly and efficiently.
One of the most impressive features of Google Translate is its ability to handle complex sentences and idiomatic expressions. This is made possible through the use of neural machine translation (NMT), which Google adopted in 2016. NMT uses deep learning techniques to produce more natural and accurate translations by considering the context of entire sentences rather than just individual words.
Google Translate is continually evolving. The company is investing heavily in artificial intelligence and machine learning to further enhance the service’s accuracy and expand its language offerings. Future updates may include support for more dialects and regional languages, as well as improvements in understanding and translating colloquial speech.
Google Translate can now translate websites and text in more than 64 different languages, you can find out more details over at the Google Blog.
Source The Next Web
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