I bought 20 new Irish-English dictionaries today then got an email to tell me that Google now translates into (and from) Gaeilge. Bugger. Also, I didn’t realise they also translate into Yiddish; my dad is almost fluent and would have a field day if he knew how to use a computer! Anyway – article copied below, which obviously is copyright of the Irish Times, etc. etc.
From the Irish Times, 27th August 2009…
ELAINE EDWARDS
Irish speakers will from today have a useful online tool to translate web pages into their first language, with the expansion of Google’s Translate service to include Gaeilge.
Google has launched a full suite of translation tools in Irish.
The service can be used to translate specific web pages or text, as well as to search English web pages using Irish keywords. The results can be translated from any of 51other languages into Irish.
Google cites the example of an Irish-speaking internet user planning an African safari.
Web results about safari tour companies in English, French or another language can be translated into Irish in “a fraction of a second” using the Google tool.
Users can also paste text or a URL for a particular webpage in any of the 51 supported languages and receive a translation in Irish immediately via Google Translate.
Director of product management at Google Tom Stocky said the company believed the Internet was 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 is written in a language that is not your own.”
Google said machine translation was “not perfect” but it was “a great tool for anyone looking to access and get an overview of information in languages he or she doesn’t know well”.
The search engine also allows users suggest a better translation if they encounter a translation that’s “awkward or not quite right”.
Google said it uses this feedback to help improve translation quality in future updates to the system.
Other languages available for translation using the service include Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh and Yiddish.
