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Tag: language

  • Baidu Takes AI Crown, Achieves New Level of Language Understanding

    Baidu Takes AI Crown, Achieves New Level of Language Understanding

    The ability to talk with an artificial intelligence (AI), be it a computer or robot, has been a staple of science fiction for decades. Despite modern advances, anyone who has used Siri, Alexa, Cortana or the Google Assistant knows we’re still a ways off from what’s portrayed in science fiction.

    Chinese tech giant Baidu has just taken a big step in that direction, however. According to the MIT Technology Review, Baidu has leapfrogged Microsoft and Google in helping AI better understand language.

    General Language Understanding Evaluation (GLUE) is the industry benchmark used to gauge an AI’s language comprehension skills. For perspective, most humans manage a score of 87 out of 100. Baidu’s model, however, scored a 90—a first for AI models.

    The team attributed their breakthrough with ERNIE (Enhanced Representation through kNowledge IntEgration) to the steps they needed to take in order to help it understand Chinese. The most advanced AI language models use a technique called “masking,” where the AI randomly hides words in order to predict the meaning of the sentence. Because of the differences between Chinese and English, Baidu “researchers trained ERNIE on a new version of masking that hides strings of characters rather than single ones. They also trained it to distinguish between meaningful and random strings so it could mask the right character combinations accordingly.”

    Not only did this method allow ERNIE to better understand Chinese language, but those lessons also improved its English processing, enabling it to achieve the highest GLUE score yet. Hopefully, this breakthrough will help pave the way for the type of AI interactions that have, so far, existed only in the realm of science fiction.

  • Google Translate’s Awesome Visual Translation Feature Gets 20 New Languages

    When Google first unveiled its visual translation feature inside the Google Translate app, it seemed pretty damn cool. But after a recent trip overseas, it proved itself incredibly useful.

    Google has just made it even more useful by adding a bunch of new languages. Before, you could hold your phone up to a road sign, menu, or whatever and receive an instant, video translation in seven languages – English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

    No, it’s up to 27.

    You can now translate to and from English and Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. You can also do one-way translations from English to Hindi and Thai (from English, but not to English).

    Each language pack is less than 2MB, and works offline.

    This means that the Google Translate app now lets you do instant video translations in 27 languages, and photo translations in 37.

    With the app update, Google has also improved the speed of voice translations.

    “In many emerging markets, slow mobile networks can make it challenging to access many online tools – so if you live in an area with unreliable mobile networks, our other update today is for you. In addition to instant visual translation, we’ve also improved our voice conversation mode (enabling real-time translation of conversations across 32 languages), so it’s even faster and more natural on slow networks,” says Barak Turovsky, Google Translate lead.

  • Instagram Defines Its Most Popular Emoji, Which Are Taking Over Our Speech

    Instagram software engineer Thomas Dimson spent, by the looks of an new blog post, a pretty substantial amount of time looking at emoji use across the platform.

    What he found is that emoji are pretty much taking over our language. In fact, he says that nearly half of all captions and comments on Instagram contain emoji. In late 2011, when Apple first introduced the emoji keyboard, that percentage was just 10%.

    And if you want to know who leads to pack in emoji use, it’s Finland (63% of all text). The US is way down on the list, with only 38% of text containing emoji.

    The whole deep dive is interesting, and worth a read. But the most interesting part is Dimson’s use of algorithms and context to rank the most-used emoji and to provide their meanings.

    Apparently, laughing so hard that you cry is the most popular emoji expression around. Here’s some of the most popular emoji on Instagram and, according to the social network, what they mean:

    And if you’re wondering why people use the salsa dancer emoji, it’s because their getting #turntup, apparently.

    Emoji is taking over.

    Just don’t use the eggplant.

  • Want to Learn Klingon? Duolingo’s Working on It

    Popular language tutorial app Duolingo has just added a new language. No, it’s not Japanese (as people have been clamoring over for some time). In fact, this language didn’t even exist 40 years ago.

    Duolingo wants to teach you Klingon.

    Yep, the language of the Klingons, which first appeared in 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, will soon be an option on the app. Lest you think this is a joke, do remember that Klingon isn’t a “fictional” language. Sure, it was spawned from a work of fiction – but it’s a real language created by linguist Marc Okrand.

    “Klingon is the constructed language spoken by the fictional extraterrestrial Klingon species in the Star Trek universe. Created by Marc Okrand, the language itself is centered around spacecraft, warfare, and weaponry — but it also reflects the directness and sense of humor of the Klingon culture. For example, the closest word you can use to express ‘hello’ is ‘nuqneH,’ which actually means ‘What do you want?’. There are also plenty of insults, as it is considered an art form. The mastery of Klingon is extremely uncommon on Earth. Join the galactic elite and start learning this fascinating language,” says Duolingo.

    According to the company, one user is creating the entire course.

    On Thursday, Duolingo co-founder Luis von Ahn said the company had “started building a course to learn Klingon”, so the timeframe for the course’s release is uncertain. If you want to be notified when the Klingon course is ready, head here.

    Are you excited to learn Klingon? Well, some people aren’t. Comments on reddit and Twitter show many are miffed about Duolingo’s decision to build a Klingon course before, oh let’s say, Japanese (or many other widely-spoken languages).

    “Why Klingon, as opposed to another real-world language that you don’t already cover? Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s awesome and I’m not trying to harsh your groove, but I am curious what prompted this particular application of resources,” asks one commenter.

    “This is fucking dumb. Put your effort into real languages. What next, Elvish? Where’s the Greek?” says another.

    Can’t please everyone, it seems.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • House of Cards: Kevin Spacey’s Southern Accent Sounds a Little Weird, But Who Cares?

    From scene one, Netflix’s original series House of Cards has been over-the-top. That’s part of its charm. Like its main character, his accent, the city of Washington DC, and American politics in general, it’s a bit absurd. And that’s ok.

    Over the past few years, House of Cards has continued to entertain – even with its tendency to turn to camp. One of the big reasons it remains essential viewing is Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood, a truly unique and wonderful character. And one of the things that makes him so unique and wonderful is that accent.

    That accent. What the hell is it?

    Vox attempts to explain why Spacey’s southern drawl might sound a bit off at times. According to linguists, Spacey’s accent isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s just outdated. Pre-WWII, in fact.

    From Vox:

    There are a couple of distinct features that make Underwood “sound” Southern to some people. One of these traits is his “R-lessness,” which an expert would call his “non-rhoticity.”

    “This is when r at the ends of syllables is pronounced like a vowel or deleted, so that car and cars sound like cah and cahs,” Becker explained to me. You can hear it in the way Underwood says words like “uninformed” and “careless.”

    This is one of the features that Thomas considers a stereotypical Southern feature. It sounds the way people think Southerners sound, but it’s actually a feature that is disappearing in Southern speech.

    Also think about when Frank Underwood says the word “whip”. Is it in your head? He says “hwip”, right? He inverts the first two consonants. This is another example of Spacey taking a page from how southerners talked decades ago – but not necessarily how they talk today.

    Of course, “southerner” is a very broad description that encompasses thousands of dialects. But there are certain vocal patterns that are consistent with what a regular TV audience considers “southern”. Spacey goes over-the-top, but it’s always entertaining.

    Plus, you just love listening to him talk. And in the end, that’s all that matters.

    Image via YouTube

  • Yeah, Dad, Google Translate Knows Your Dutch Vulgarity

    Google Translate is a pretty magical app. I think we can say that without equivocation. Google recently added the ability to point and shoot words and have them instantly translated – and the darndest thing is that it actually works. Google Translate also improved its real-time conversation feature and added support for more languages. Basically, the Google Translate app is a must-have for travelers, people learning a new language …

    And dads. Don’t forget about dads.

    That word you’re hearing is “kippennueker”, a Dutch word that Google Translate will tell you means “chickens fucker”. That’s pretty accurate, as the phrase literally means committing acts of sodomy with a chicken. In actual practice, however, kippennueker is used to describe a stupid, fussy, or otherwise terrible person.

    Congrats, Google Translate. Also, congrats dads. Never change.

  • Twitter Translation Is Back, Still Bing-Powered

    Bing-powered translations have returned to Twitter.

    The social network announced the news in a tweet, saying that it was introducing tweet translation with Bing translator.

    “Introducing” really means “Reintroducing”, as Twitter used to have Bing-powered translations – but they were instant and appeared automatically below tweets in foreign (to you) languages. Twitter axed that feature in August of last year.

    Translation tool appears as a globe icon in the upper-right-hand corner of tweets. It’s now available on desktop, iOS, Android, and Tweetdeck.

    A disclaimer as to why the translations are sometimes shitty:

    “Although Bing Translator relies on advanced translation software to provide Tweet translations, the results still vary and often fall below the accuracy and fluency of translations provided by a professional translator. For this reason, the original text is always displayed above its translation.”

    Still, it’s better than nothing.

  • Google Translate Gets Support For 10 More Languages

    Google announced the addition of ten new languages to Google Translate. A year ago, the company announced that it had reached the 80-language milestone. Now, it’s up to 90.

    The new languages are: Chichewa (Chinyanja), Malagasy, Sesotho, Malayalam (മലയാളം), Myanmar (Burmese, မြန်မာစာ), Sinhala (සිංහල), Sundanese (Basa Sunda), Kazakh (Қазақ тілі), Tajik (Тоҷикӣ), and Uzbek (Oʻzbek tili).

    “These 10 new languages will allow more than 200 million additional people to translate text to and from their native languages,” says the Google Translate engineering team.

    Back in the summer, Google launched its Translate Community aimed at helping the company improve its translation quality for the languages it already supported, as well as contribute to additional languages. Clearly that initiative has paid off.

    “If it weren’t for the active Translate Community participation, we wouldn’t be able to launch some of these languages today,” Google says. “While our translation system learns from translated data found on the web, sometimes we need support from humans to improve our algorithms. We’re very grateful for all the support we’re getting today and we hope that together with our community, we can continue improving translation quality for the languages we support today and add even more languages in the future.

    The new languages are now available on translate.google.com, and will hit the mobile apps and built-in translation functionality in Chrome soon.

    Image via Google

  • Google Webmaster Academy Expands To More Languages

    Google launched Webmaster Academy in 2012 as a way to help small businesses improve their web and Google presence through education about various webmaster topics. It even added Panda update guidance at one point.

    Last year, Google expanded the offering to 20 additional languages, and has now expanded it to twenty-two more .

    Google said on Monday:

    Today, the new Webmaster Academy goes live in 22 languages! New or beginner webmasters speaking a multitude of languages can now learn the fundamentals of making a great site, providing an enjoyable user experience, and ranking well in search results. And if you think you’re already familiar with these topics, take the quizzes at the end of each module to prove it :).

    So give Webmaster Academy a read in your preferred language and let us know in the comments or help forum what you think. We’ve gotten such great and helpful feedback after the English version launched this past March so we hope this straightforward and easy-to-read guide can be helpful (and fun!) to everyone.

    You may be wondering why they said they launched the English version this past March, when I already noted that it was launched in 2012. That’s because in March, they launched the “new” Webmaster Academy, which included new and expanded content. You can learn more about that here.

    For some reason, Google didn’t specify which languages the offering is now available in.

    Image via Google

  • Google Now Lets You Speak Multiple Languages Without Changing Settings

    Google announced a change to the Google Search app for Android that enables you to speak different languages to Google without having to keep going in and changing the settings to do so.

    Just change a setting one time, and you should be good to go. Google will understand you regardless of which language you decide to speak at any given time.

    Google explains on the Inside Search blog:

    For many people out there, speaking just one language isn’t enough. More than half the world’s population speaks two or more languages—and now Google can keep up. With the Google Search app on Android, you can speak in multiple languages and Google will understand you no matter which one you choose. So you can fire off a search for nearby restaurants in English, then dictate a text to your friend in French.

    You can use voice search in more than 50 languages and dialects already, but previously you had to change your settings if you wanted to switch languages. Now, you can just make a small, one-time change to your settings, and then you can switch back and forth easily. Google will automatically detect which language you’re using. (For now, you need to stick to one language per sentence though.) You can select up to five languages total—enough to satisfy all but the most advanced polyglots. Whether you get a spoken response from Google depends on the language you use and your query (and you’ll see more languages and features added over time).

    The feature requires version 3.6 of the Google Search App. To set it up, go to Google Settings from the apps menu on your device, then go to Search & Now, then Voice, then Languages. From there, simply select the languages you want to be able to speak. Simple as that.

    Image via Google

  • Twitter Axes Bing-Powered Translations

    Twitter Axes Bing-Powered Translations

    About a year ago, Twitter began offering instant tweet translations, powered by Bing. As with any basic translation tool, it wasn’t always the most accurate thing around, but it worked in many instances.

    And now it’s gone. There are tweets from people complaining about the lack of the Bing translate going as far back as August 2nd, so it appears that Twitter quietly phased out the feature.

    We confirmed, through searches for tweets in various languages, that the Bing translation feature is nowhere to be found on desktop or mobile.

    Going forward, it’s unlikely that Twitter would be content to exist without some sort of translation feature. Twitter is too global, and the way news and trends are spread across the social landscape pretty much demands some basic sort of translation. Maybe they removed Bing translate because they were unsatisfied with its performance (it had a tendency to do some weird things). Maybe they’re just making it better, and will relaunch it at some point.

    Or maybe Twitter is moving away from Bing as its translation source. Bing and Twitter have had a solid search partnership for nearly five years – one they continue to expand – so it’s not like Twitter and Bing are on the outs or anything.

  • Yelp Launches Mobile Review Translation On iPhone

    Yelp announced the launch of automated review translation in its iPhone app. They offer reviews in fifteen languages in 27 countries. As the company continues to expand internationally, this will only become more important.

    The app makes use of Bing Translator (you didn’t think they were going to go with Google, did you?), and lets you tap to translate a single review or all reviews.

    “Although machine-translation is not perfect, it’s a fantastic resource for understanding the overall meaning and context of a review that would otherwise be unavailable to a Yelper who does not speak that language,” says Yelp international product manager Stepanie T. “Use this feature to get a general idea of a reviewer’s experience, but understand that some details may be lost in translation.”

    “Yelp has always given both locals and travelers alike the ability to find the best hidden gems through the knowledge of the Yelp global community, and mobile review translation makes that even easier,’ she adds. “This tool also gives local businesses that are a bit off the beaten path a better chance to be discovered by travelers. Sounds like a win-win situation to us!”

    Yelp supports English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, French, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish, and Japanese.The translation feature will come to its Android app soon.

    Image via Yelp

  • Gmail Starts Recognizing Non-Latin Characters In Email Addresses

    Google announced that Gmail will now recognize addresses that contain accented or non-Latin characters, so suers can send emails to, and receive them from, people how have such characters in their addresses.

    Believe it or not, half way through 2014, this still hasn’t been a thing.

    Gmail software engineer Pedro Chaparro Monferrer says, “Whether your email address is firstname.lastname@ or something more expressive like corgicrazy@, an email address says something about who you are. But from the start, email addresses have always required you to use non-accented Latin characters when signing up. Less than half of the world’s population has a mother tongue that uses the Latin alphabet. And even fewer people use only the letters A-Z. So if your name (or that of your favorite pet) contains accented characters (like “José Ramón”) or is written in another script like Chinese or Devanagari, your email address options are limited.”

    “But all that could change,” he adds. “In 2012, an organization called the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) created a new email standard that supports addresses with non-Latin and accented Latin characters (e.g. 武＠メール.グーグル). In order for this standard to become a reality, every email provider and every website that asks you for your email address must adopt it. That’s obviously a tough hill to climb. The technology is there, but someone has to take the first step. Today we’re ready to be that someone.”

    Google will also add the functionality to Google Calendar “shortly”.

    In terms of Gmail becoming more of a global service, Google launched thirteen additional languages last month.

    Image via Google

  • Scrabble Gets with the Times, Adds Selfie, Hashtag, and Mixtape

    It’s been about a decade since the Scrabble dictionary received a major update. But when the fifth edition of the The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary comes out on Wednesday, it’ll allow you to play your favorite new kewl internets words – as well as words you’ve been dying to play since 1988.

    “The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary now includes favorite words from the past decade, making game play even more entertaining and relevant,” adds Jonathan Berkowitz, Vice President of Global Brand Strategy & Marketing at Hasbro. “We’re also thrilled to add GEOCACHE, winner of our Scrabble Word Showdown game earlier this year, and the first fan-voted word playable in the game.”

    What trendy words of the past decade are we talking here? How about chillax, a verb meaning “to calm down.” How about joypad, a “device with buttons to control computer images.” Oh, and there’s mixtape, a “compilation of songs recorded from various sources.”

    Bitchin’.

    Overindulgent sarcasm aside, Scrabble has added the ubiquitous selfie to the dictionary. Finally. Sure, other dictionaries have been adding the word selfie over the past few years, but you doesn’t mean shit until you’re a legally-playable word in Scrabble. And I say that in all sincerity. Selfie, you’ve made it kid.

    Other words included in the new edition? Bromance, Dubstep, Frenemy, Hashtag, Sodoku, Texter, and Webzine.

    I’ll give $100 to the first person that can prove that they’ve ever said the word webzine.*

    *Not really. I’m such a buzzkill (new to the dictionary as well!).

    Image via Scrabble, Facebook

  • Google Launches Translate Community

    Google Launches Translate Community

    Google just announced the launch of a new Translate Community aimed at helping the company improve its translation quality for the 80 languages it already supports.

    The community is aimed at multi-lingual language enthusiasts, who will also be tasked with helping Google launch in additional languages.

    “In the new community, you’ll find options to help with a variety of things, including generating new translations and rating existing ones,” says Google Translate program manager Sveta Kelman. “Over time, you’ll find more ways to contribute, as well as get more visibility into the impact of your contributions and the activity across the community. We will also localize Community pages to support your preferred display language. If you have feedback and ideas about improving and growing our community, we’d love to hear it so please don’t hesitate to submit it via “Send feedback” link on the bottom of the page.”

    Translate Community will also give people who don’t necessarily want to volunteer their time to dedicate to the cause a place to let the team know about problems they encounter while using Google’s products.

    Users can click an “Improve this translation” button, and then “Contribute” to submit a suggestion. It will incorporate corrections over time.

    Image via Google

  • Gmail Gets Support For Thirteen More Languages

    It’s hard to believe that in July of 2014, Gmail doesn’t already support every language, but Google announced that it now supports thirteen more.

    The new languages are: Afrikaans, Armenian, Azerbaijani (Azeri), Chinese (Hong Kong), French (Canada), Galician, Georgian, Khmer, Lao, Mongolian, Nepali, Sinhala, and Zulu.

    “Email is a universal way to communicate,” says Ian Hill, Senior Project Manager on Google Localization. “No matter where you are, you can reach anyone else in the world with the press of a button. We take it for granted now, but it’s so much easier to keep in touch with people than it was in the old days of pens, paper, and stamps. But there’s still an important barrier we need to overcome to make email truly universal: language. Gmail is already available in 58 languages, and today we’re bringing that total to 71—covering 94 percent of the world’s Internet population and bringing us closer to our goal of making sure that, no matter what language you write in, you can use it in Gmail.”

    “As any native speaker knows, each language has its own nuances, so we worked closely with linguists to make sure the tone and style are just right,” Hill says. “For example, both Hong Kong and Taiwan use traditional Chinese characters. However, you’ll notice that Gmail’s new Chinese (Hong Kong) language uses 收件箱 for “Inbox” instead of 收件匣, which is a word more common in Taiwan.”

    All the new languages are rolling out today on the web and feature phones. You can switch languages in the settings.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Oxford Comma? Americans Still Unsure, Hostile, and Divided

    Here’s the thing about the Oxford comma – it’s optional, highly debated, and ultimately unnecessary. I mean, I use it – I’m not some Oxford comma-denying lunatic who doesn’t understand how the party with strippers, JFK and Stalin is confusing, while the party with strippers, JFK, and Stalin is not confusing (I know there are plenty of examples from the other side, don’t bother).

    To me, the Oxford comma provides clarity in the murky world of the English language. You might disagree but if you do, you’re currently in the minority according to a new poll.

    FiveThirtyEight’s Data Lab polled over 1,100 Americans about the Oxford comma. They asked a simple question:

    Is it “It’s important for a person to be honest, kind and loyal,” or “It’s important for a person to be honest, kind, and loyal.”

    And 57 percent chose the latter. That’s a pretty large margin in some arenas, but it does little in this debate except to reaffirm that the country is divided. There’s a comma civil war.

    But here’s the truly interesting part of FiveThirtyEight’s poll –

    Ah, so the more of a smug asshole you are about your writing skills, the more likely you are to prefer the Oxford comma.

    That may be true, but a majority of those polled supported it. Listen, there’s really no settling this debate. Sure, the Oxford comma is important, preferred by more style books, and ultimately correct. You can go on with your life, forsaking the Oxford comma all you want – and you have every right to, especially when a major style book advocates your side of the argument. I won’t throw shade over some silly punctuation. Ultimately, who gives a f*ck about an Oxford comma?

    Oh, ok.

    Oh, ok.

    So let’s not argue. Let’s just agree that for writing to be good, it needs to be clear, concise and consistent.

    Images via FiveThirtyEight, J E Smith (Flickr Creative Commons)

  • Skype Is Getting Real-Time Translation Later This Year

    Skype Is Getting Real-Time Translation Later This Year

    There’s no denying that Microsoft’s Skype has played a huge part in international communication, as it’s one of the most popular ways for person A to see and hear person B across the globe.

    Of course, person A and person B often speak a different language, which can obviously hamper communication. In order make Skype even more useful, Microsoft says that it will soon have real-time voice and text translation baked right in.

    “Skype Translator results from decades of work by the industry, years of work by our researchers, and now is being developed jointly by the Skype and Microsoft Translator teams,” says Gurdeep Pall, Corporate Vice President of Skype and Lync at Microsoft. “In our industry, we often talk about pursuing big, bold dreams, and of how we’re limited only by the power of our imaginations. Skype Translator is one of those endeavors.”

    Microsoft demoed the new technology at the inaugural CODE conference in California this week. Check out Pall having a translated conversation with a German colleague via Skype. As you’ll see, Skype’s new translation feature took Pall’s voice and translated it into both German text and German voice, and then did the same for his German colleague’s speech.

    A few hiccups, sure, but overall the translation fostered an understandable conversation. Thought Microsoft says that we are in the early days of this technology, they have given a launch date for the Skype Translator Windows 8 beta app–the end of this year.

    Image via Official Microsoft Blog 

  • Twitter Ads Get New Language Targeting

    Twitter Ads Get New Language Targeting

    Twitter has been launching all kinds of ad features lately, including an app promotion suite, native ads on MoPub, the Website Card, the expansion of geo-targeting to more countries, and postal code targeting in the U.S.

    On Wednesday, the company announced new language targeting capabilities. Advertisers will be able to target promoted tweets and accounts by language. Twitter is also providing language-specific analytics.

    “Language targeting can benefit marketers who want to reach a global audience with language-specific messaging, or who are in countries where large populations speak multiple languages,” explains Twitter’s Nipoon Malhotra. “For example, an advertiser who wants to Promote Tweets to Italian-speaking soccer fans during the World Cup can use Italian language targeting to reach the right users around the world.”

    “Advertisers can also use language targeting in conjunction with our robust suite of targeting options based on interest, keyword, gender, geo or tailored audience segments. For instance, a travel brand that wants to reach Spanish-speaking travelers in the U.S. can combine U.S. geo-targeting, travel-category interest targeting and Spanish language targeting to effectively connect with their target audience.”

    The new targeting is available to all advertisers and through the Ads API.

    Image via Twitter

  • Google Translate Hits 80 Languages Milestone, Adds 9 New Ones

    Google Translate has hit the 80 languages milestone, as Google announced the addition of support for nine more languages.

    “Whether you’re trekking to a new place or simply trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t share a language with you, Google Translate can help you connect to new information and people,” says software engineer Arne Mauser. “Today, we’re launching 9 new languages that span Africa, Asia, and Oceania and have over 200 million native speakers, collectively.”

    These languages would be: Hausa (Harshen Hausa), Igbo (Asụsụ Igbo), Yoruba (èdè Yorùbá), Somali (Af-Soomaali), Zulu (isiZulu), Mongolian (Монгол хэл), Nepali (नेपाली), Punjabi language (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ) (Gurmukhi script) and Maori (Te Reo Māori).

    The first three are major languages of Nigeria. Somali is spoken in Somalia as well as other countries around the Horn of Africa, and has 17 million native speakers. Zulu is spoken in South Africa as well as other south-western African countries with 10 million native speakers.

    In Asia, Mongolian is spoken in Mongolia in addition to parts of China, and has 6 million native speakers. Nepali is poken in Nepal as well as India, and has 17 million native speakers. Punjabi is spoken in India and Pakistan, and has 100 million native speakers.

    Maori is spoken in New Zealand with 160 thousand speakers. Support for this language was made possible by a volunteer effort.

    Earlier this year, Google added Bosnian, Cebuano, Hmong, Javanese and Marathi. You can see all supported languages here.

    Image: Google

  • Vine Goes Global with 19 New Languages, New Focus on Unearthing Local Content

    Twitter’s 6-second video app Vine has turned its attention to global expansion by adding support for 19 new languages in their iOS and Android apps.

    Here are the new languages that Vine now supports:

    Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Thai and Turkish. Vine for Android is also available in two additional languages: Filipino and Polish.

    One of the more interesting things from Vine’s announcement is this little bit about working on unearthing local content:

    “We’re also beginning to explore ways to surface Vine videos that are popular in a particular country. Wherever you are in the world – be it Japan, Brazil or somewhere in between – we hope this update makes it easier for you to discover and create videos that bring us all closer together,” said co-founder Colin Kroll.

    Of course, adding a regional flare to Vine’s explore feature would be a move not unlike Twitter’s recent push to make trends more local.

    Earlier this month, Vine finally launched on Windows Phone – but that platform wasn’t mentioned in today’s language support update.

    Vine’s been retooling and adding new features to the app lately – for instance giving users granular editing powers last month.

    Vine topped 40 million users back in August.

    Image via Vine Blog