Google announced the expansion of its translation services Google Translate to include five more Indian languages — Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu — thus increasing its reach to a potential half a million population.
Since these languages each have their own unique scripts, Google have enabled a transliterated input method for those of you without Indian language keyboards. Google Transliteration allows you to type Indian languages phonetically using Roman characters and keyboard. You just need to type a word the way it sounds in English and Google Transliteration will convert it to its local script. For example, if you type in the word “amma,” it will generate the Tamil word அம்மா. It is the sound of the words that is converted from one alphabet to the other, not their meaning.
With Google Translate for Indic languages, you type அம்மா in Tamil and it is translated as Mother in English or मां in Hindi instantly.
[advt]To see all these beautiful scripts in action, you’ll need to install fonts for each language. Download the fonts for Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati and Kannada.
In India and Bangladesh alone, more than 500 million people speak these five languages. Since 2009, Google have launched a total of 11 alpha languages, bringing the current number of languages supported by Google Translate to 63.
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