Google has today announced a host of new features for Indian languages to across its products to make the experience more India-friendly. The company has added neural machine translation to Google Translate, Chrome browser, Google search and Maps. Gboardkeyboard App now supports 22 Indian languages and the brand has also added Hindi dictionary to Google search.
Starting today, Google Translate will use Google’s new Neural Machine Translation technology to translate between English and nine widely used Indian languages namely Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Malayalam and Kannada. The latest technology is better than the old technique as it translates full sentences at a time, instead of pieces of a sentence which were done earlier. “This change improves the quality of translation in a single jump than seen in the last ten years combined,” the company says.
Google has also announced the extension of Neural Machine Translation to Chrome browser’s built-in Auto-Translate functionality to web content. Through this features users can now enjoy all the web content in nine Indian languages with translations of everything from song lyrics to news articles to cricket discussions.
Further, this new feature has also been added to Google search and Maps, through which one can see local reviews on Google Maps, both on mobile and desktop, in their preferred language. The app will automatically translate the local reviews in the language selected by the users on their device in addition to the original language of the review.
Google latest keyboard app, Gboard now support 22 scheduled Indian languages. Gboard will allow users to Search and use Google Translate right on their keyboard. For users who often switch back and forth between Hindi and English, they will also be able to use Hinglish language option with new text editing tool that makes it easier to select, copy and paste, plus new options for resizing and repositioning the keyboard so it fits into the hand and texting style.
Like Google Indic Keyboard, Gboard offers auto-correction and prediction in these new languages, plus two layouts for each—one in the native language script and one with the QWERTY layout for transliteration, which lets users spell words phonetically using the QWERTY alphabet and get text output in their native language script.
Lastly, the company has added Hindi dictionary on Google search. Google will now offer Hindi dictionary results from Rajpal & Sons dictionary in collaboration with the Oxford University Press. This new experience will also support transliteration, allowing users to use their existing keyboard to find meanings in the Hindi language.