“Online search giant is adding another multilingual product in India; the service automatically translates English text, web pages or queries into Hindi.”
New Delhi — Google Inc. on Monday has finally announced the launch of Google Translate to enable Hindi-speaking users to enjoy all its features. The move indicates the importance that the Google accords to the expanding Indian market.
The service automatically translates English text, web pages or queries into Hindi. Users can now able to translate text, web page and issue query in Hindi in order to get desired information and bloggers can use the new application to create blogs in regional languages.
Out of the overall literate Indian population, only 13% are English literate, so this demands the need of a translator feature that can convert the desired text or web page to Hindi.
As the internet seems to be spreading its wings wide open to the remote locations of India and the other parts of the world, and to make Google more acceptable amongst the Hindi speaking population of India, so the requirement of a multi-lingual application has become a must.
In the past Google had given great importance to capture Chinese market and was ready to bend its’ some of well established principles. Now the company sees big prospect in the rising Indian market and the increased use of the search engine and other products.
Last year Google promoted an India serving innovation platform, “Google India Labs,” and two other products specific to India – Google Local Search and Google Local Business Centre. The announcement is further evidence of the global search giant’s commitment to providing locally relevant information and opportunities for its Indian users.
Users desiring to use the service can visit http://www.google.com/translate_t and translate any page from English to Hindi. Additionally users can also type using their regular keyboard. For example typing in “Aap” automatically becomes the Hindi word for [you] without having to use a special keyboard.
Similarly, with the help of this application, Hindu users can also add iGoogle Gadget to their homepage. Thus, not only Hindi, but other regional languages like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam may also be used easily on the net.
Currently Google Translate allows for translation of English into 14 local dialects including Arabic and Hindi. The company said on its web site that it is working to include more languages.
“We are working to support other languages and will introduce them as soon as the automatic translation meets our standards. It is difficult to project how long this will take, as the problem is complex and each language presents its own unique challenges,” Google added.
“Bloggers might also use this new application to create blogs in select regional languages.”
However, the application is useful in a very narrow sense that it cannot translate intricate phrases and sentences and can be of help only for a very limited purpose.