This announcement means that Afrikaans-speaking users will be able to find and view search results on foreign language web pages in their own language.
The Google Translate translation service makes it possible for users to translate specific web pages or text, as well as search English web pages using Afrikaans keywords and have the results translated from any of 51 other languages into Afrikaans.
Users can also paste text or a URL for a particular webpage in any of the 51 supported languages and receive a translation in Afrikaans immediately via Google Translate.
“At Google we believe that the Internet is about enabling access to the world’s information — all of the world’s information, in all of its languages. Today’s launch of Google Translate in nine new languages makes it easier to access web content from all over the web, even when it was written in language not your own.” says Tom Stocky, Director of Product Management at Google.
“Google Translate is a great tool for people around the world who want to search and get results in their own language,” said Stephen Newton for Google South Africa. “Machine translation is a complex challenge but Google recognises the rich diversity of languages in Africa, and the introduction of Swahili and Afrikaans is one step in our ongoing strategy to develop products tailored to Africa, so we can best serve all users across all countries and communities.”
Machine translation isn’t perfect, but it’s a great tool for anyone looking to access and get an overview of information in languages he or she doesn’t know well. In addition, Google also provides users the ability to suggest a better translation if they encounter a translation that’s awkward or not quite right. Google uses this feedback to help improve translation quality in future updates to the system.
Google Translate can be found at http://translate.google.co.za/
Google Translate in Afrikaans – comments and views
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