A Google Translate Experiment Shows Definitions

Google Translate experiments with displaying definitions for the words you're translating. Jérémy Heleine noticed the new feature, which shows a list of definitions, synonyms, examples and related words and snippets. Google also suggests a related translation ("see also").

Definitions and synonyms are also displayed in Google Search, but they're useful in Google Translate too. In addition to using Google Translate as a dictionary, you could improve your translation by picking a better synonym, a context or a more appropriate expression. For example, instead of using "Hello", you could translate "Hi" or "Howdy" and you'll get different translations.

Google Search even lets you translate words when searching for definitions. Search for [define hello], expand the dictionary card and you'll see a section called "translation hello to". Another option is to search for [translate hello into french].

{ Thanks, Frédéric Pereira. }

Edit Translations to Improve Google Translate

Google Translate now lets you edit translations. Click the "Improve" icon below the translation, edit the text and click "Contribute". Google shows this message: "Your contribution will be used to improve translation quality and may be shown to users anonymously".

Until now, you could only click the words from the translations and pick one of the alternate translations offered by Google.

{ Thanks, Emanuele Bartolomucci. }

Definite Articles in Google Translate

This is pretty useful. When you translate a noun, Google Translate now shows the proper definite article. For example, when you translate "person" into Portuguese, Google displays multiple translations: "a pessoa", "o homem", "a mulher" and more. Google actually translates "the person".

When there are too many translations, Google collapses the list.

{ Thanks, Camilo. }

9 New Languages in Google Translate

Google Translate supports 9 new languages: Hausa (Nigeria, 35 million speakers), Igbo (Nigeria, 25 million speakers), Yoruba (Nigeria, 28 million speakers), Somali (Somalia, 17 million speakers), Zulu (South Africa, 10 million speakers), Mongolian (Mongolia, China, 6 million speakers), Nepali (Nepal, India, Bhutan 17 million speakers), Punjabi (India, Pakistan, 100 million speakers), Maori (New Zealand, 160,000 speakers). Google Translate now supports 80 languages and that's impressive.

According to Ethnologue, there are 80 languages with more than 10 million native speakers, 200 languages with at least 3 million speakers and 1,300 languages with at least 100,000 speakers. Google Translate supports all the languages with more than 100 million native speakers, 13 of the 16 languages that have between 50 and 100 million speakers, 4 of the 13 languages that have between 30 and 50 million speakers and 15 of the 47 languages that have between 10 and 30 million speakers.

Google Community Translation

You might remember "Google in Your Language", the Google feature that allowed you to translate Google services. It was a great way to help Google support new languages, but you could also use it to find new Google features.

It looks like the translation console will be back. There's a Google Community Translation page that links to a Chrome extension which is not available.

I searched for the extension ID and found a Chrome log with information about the extension: "Tool for providing translations and corrections for Google products". The name of the extension is "Google in Your Language".

{ Thanks, Florian K. }