Tacky but cheeky, Google offers Hindi translation

World’s leading search engine Google unveiled an online platform that translates between Hindi and English. A report by Ruchi Hajela.

Google’s got technology. And it has some guts. The world’s leading search engine on Monday unveiled an online platform that translates between Hindi and English. The bold effort is hi-tech but low on utility, as translations often tend to be more funny than appropriate.

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The translation service (http://www.google.com/translate_t) throws up meanings or sentences that sound right for simple sentences like “I love you” or “How are you?” but fumbles away with literal dictionary words when one tries complex sentences, idiomatic usage or slang words — and it also errs on syntax.

But the software operates on the principle of “More you use, the better it can get” because users can offer alternatives and press a button that could make the computer system “learn” and perfect usage over time.

“There is a need to reach people who may be English-familiar, but Indic language proficient,” Rahul Roy Chowdhury, Product Manager, Google India, told HT. “We’ll work to make Google Translate in Hindi even better,” said Chowdhury.

Google already offers a transliteration service to convert Roman (English) scripts to Devnagari (Hindi) and some other Indian languages and free space on its Blogger.com site for Hindi and regional language blogs.