Long waited Google Translate in and from Nepali is now a reality. Google translate reached its 80 languages milestone this December, adding 9 new languages: Nepali (नेपाली), Hausa (Harshen Hausa), Igbo (Asụsụ Igbo), Yoruba (èdè Yorùbá), Somali (Af-Soomaali), Zulu (isiZulu), Mongolian (Монгол хэл), Punjabi language (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ) (Gurmukhi script) and Maori (Te Reo Māori). Nepali Language must have been heavy weighted it took Google years to add this language to its translation service, started in 2007.
What does Google Nepali translation do?
Google Translate is a free, multilingual statistical machine-translation service provided by Google Inc. to translate written text from one language into another. As title suggest Google Nepali Translation, translates any language English to Nepali, Spanish to Nepali and Nepali to English, Nepali to Spanish, and any other language supported by Google Translate Service.
Why was it in need?
Nepali Language has 17 millions of native speakers in Nepal as well as in India. Every year number of international tourist come to Nepal for visit, on their visit to Nepal tourists wants to communicate with Nepalis in that place, but could not cope with the language. Well, Google Translate was felt of need here. That was just a mere example.
As Nepal is being fighting to bring development in Information and Communication Technology, and Google to increase language translate support, Nepali Language was the next best language to be added in Google Translate Service.
With dramatic ancient history, rich in poetry and literature, people around world are found to be more interested in Nepali Language, and search on web for better translation guide and tutor. So, Google Nepali Translate is now supposed to help other to learn Nepali language and be their translator tutor.
Google Translate in and from Nepali was also in need to create another milestone in development and globalization of Nepali Language. With this new service of Google translate we need to bring standardization of Nepali keyboard as well with gradual improvements in facilities like this translation.
The good and the bad of this new service and improvements
Well, नहुनु मामा भन्दा कानो मामा बेस (Nepali Proverb), it is good to have Nepali Language added in Google Translate App.
Google Translate Nepali, will definitely help many people around world, but there are still many improvements to be made. Nepali language vocabulary has many formulas for its rich grammar, and Google has not yet covered all of it.
Unlike English language, Nepali Language vocabulary is much troublesome with its synaptic and semantic structure. Rules of grammar may be same as English but one word’s meaning differs with what sense it has to make in the whole sentence.
Pronouns in English like You has different abstract levels in Nepali Language as तॅ , तिमी, तपाई, हजुर and so on, and when used with sentence to address people it may sometime give a false expression. Well, Google Translation service has yet more to cover in Nepali Language.
Wikipedia says “Google Translate does not apply grammatical rules, since its algorithms are based on statistical analysis rather than traditional rule-based analysis. Indeed, the system’s original creator, Franz Josef Och, has criticized the effectiveness of rule-based algorithms in favor of statistical approaches. It is based on a method called statistical machine translation, and more specifically, on research by Och who won the DARPA contest for speed machine translation in 2003. He is now the head of Google’s machine translation group.”
Latest feeds on social networking circle is flooded with comment to Google Nepali Translate service, many of them are thanking Google for adding Nepali language whereas some are still appealing and suggesting Google to make improvements. Pratima Sharma writes, “गुगल नेपालीमा अनुवाद रोचक छ!” in her Facebook while Pallavi Dhakal tweets “#GoogleTranslate has #Nepali. Works like a foreigner beginning to learn कखग overwhelmed by the tongue twisting vocab”
How could Google initiate this service?
Google started translation service since 2010 and till 2013/12, it has 71 different languages. All those languages were the effort of general public and Google Language Expert group. So, this was Crowd Sourced support service of Google where, Google also recruited some language experts. Thanks to those who contributed there time for google to understand their language.
Google Nepali translation feedback: "Please help Google Translate improve quality for your language https://t.co/4lNaI6v2se " (ref: OP)
— Bhupal Sapkota (@bhu1st) December 11, 2013
Google is still asking for help from crowd on web, to bring improvements in language. To help Google understand your native language and add language to translation, feel free to fill this form and participate in this crowd sourced service of Google.
They say that the first step is always the hardest. Now that it’s taken the first baby step, we’ll hopefully get to see it stumble and fall, make an effort to get up again and slowly,learn to walk like an adult. The best part about this is that we’ll be the fortunate ones to help it get up when it falls. 🙂
This is good news. Given now that Nepali language will also be included in Google translate and that we can translate other different languages in Nepali too. As Pratima also said, first step is the hardest, and other steps will follow.
Wow this is great.