During the Google I/O keynote, Google announced that it was making Google Translate even more powerful. However, to what extent this is useful for numerous users remains to be seen. Many common languages are already supported by Google Translate, the 24 new ones are certainly “niche” for many – those who speak the language and/or want to translate the will of course see it differently.
Over 300 million people speak the newly added languages - such as Mizo, spoken by around 800,000 people in far northeast India, and Lingala, spoken by over 45 million people in central Africa. As part of this update, indigenous languages of the Americas (Quechua, Guarani and Aymara) and an English dialect (Krio from Sierra Leone) were also added to Google Translate for the first time.
Here is a full list of the new languages now available in Google Translate:
- Assamese, spoken by about 25 million people in northeastern India
- Aymara spoken by about two million people in Bolivia, Chile and Peru
- Bambara, spoken by about 14 million people in Mali
- Bhojpuri, spoken by about 50 million people in northern India, Nepal and Fiji
- Dhivehi, spoken by around 300,000 people in the Maldives
- Dogri, spoken by about three million people in North India
- Ewe, spoken by around seven million people in Ghana and Togo
- Guarani spoken by about seven million people in Paraguay and Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil
- Ilocano, spoken by about 10 million people in the north of the Philippines
- Konkani, spoken by about two million people in central India
- Krio, spoken by about four million people in Sierra Leone
- Kurdish (Sorani), used by about eight million people, mostly in Iraq
- Lingala spoken by approximately 45 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Angola and the Republic of South Sudan
- Luganda, spoken by about 20 million people in Uganda and Rwanda
- Maithili, spoken by about 34 million people in northern India
- Meiteilon (Manipuri), spoken by about two million people in northeastern India
- Mizo, is spoken by about 830,000 people in northeastern India
- Oromo, spoken by about 37 million people in Ethiopia and Kenya
- Quechua, spoken by about 10 million people in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and surrounding countries
- Sanskrit, used by about 20,000 people in India
- Sepedi, spoken by around 14 million people in South Africa
- Tigrinya used by about eight million people in Eritrea and Ethiopia
- Tsonga, spoken by about seven million people in Eswatini, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe
- Twi, spoken by about 11 million people in Ghana