In 2006, Google started with machine learning-based translations between English and Arabic, Chinese and Russian. Almost 10 years later, with this update, Google now offer 103 languages that cover 99% of the online population.

The 13 new languages — Amharic, Corsican, Frisian, Kyrgyz, Hawaiian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Luxembourgish, Samoan, Scots Gaelic, Shona, Sindhi, Pashto and Xhosa — help bring a combined 120 million new people to the billions who can already communicate with Translate all over the world.

But, as already existing documents can’t cover the breadth of a language, we also rely on people like you in Translate Community to help improve current Google Translate languages and add new ones, like Frisian and Kyrgyz. So far, over 3 million people have contributed approximately 200 million translated words.

Here’s the list, along with descriptions, straight from Google.

13 Newly Supported Languages:

1. Amharic (Ethiopia) is the second most widely spoken Semitic language after Arabic
2. Corsican (Island of Corsica, France) is closely related to Italian and was Napoleon’s first language
3. Frisian (Netherlands and Germany) is the native language of over half the inhabitants of the Friesland province of the Netherlands
4. Kyrgyz (Kyrgyzstan) is the language of the Epic of Manas, which is 20x longer than the Iliad and the Odyssey put together
5. Hawaiian (Hawaii) has lent several words to the English language, such as ukulele and wiki
6. Kurdish (Kurmanji) (Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria) is written with Latin letters while the others two varieties of Kurdish are written with Arabic script
7. Luxembourgish (Luxembourg) completes the list of official EU languages Translate covers
8. Pashto (Afghanistan and Pakistan) is written in Perso-Arabic script with an additional 12 letters, for a total of 44
9. Samoan (Samoa and American Samoa) is written using only 14 letters
10. Scots Gaelic (Scottish highlands, UK) was introduced by Irish settlers in the 4th century AD
11. Shona (Zimbabwe) is the most widely spoken of the hundreds of languages in the Bantu family
12. Sindhi (Pakistan and India) was the native language of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the “Father of the Nation” of Pakistan
13. Xhosa (South Africa) is the second most common native language in the country after Afrikaans and features three kinds of clicks, represented by the letters x, q and c

This brings the total to 103 languages. If you want to see this number rise, you can contribute by joining the Translate Community.

Source: Google Translate Blog