A few days ago, a new version of the Google Translator Toolkit – a language translation service for translators that builds on Google Translate – was released, adding another 285 languages for a total of 345, resulting in an opportunity of translating between 10,664 language pairs. The Translator Toolkit interface is furthermore now available in 35 languages, rendering it considerably more accessible to users in their own language instead of just in English.
One of Google’s self-proclaimed focal points with this move is the preservation and revitalization of small and minority languages. To this end, Google cooperated with Māori language activist and senior lecturer in computer science at the University of Waikato Dr. Te Taka Keegan who researched how tools for computer-aided translation can aid in the preservation of minority languages.
