Google added 24 languages to its translation service. Google Translate now has 133 languages. It is a valuable and convenient tool. The 24 new languages are spoken by more than 300 million people. Among them are many indigenous languages. Google started its translation service in 2006. It has added to it ever since. Google said it still has a way to go. There are 7,000 languages worldwide that are not on Translate.
Translate needs lots of linguistic data to support a language. It said: "Up until a couple of years ago, it simply was not technologically possible to add languages like these [new ones], which are what we call a low resource – meaning that there are not very many text resources…for them." Google hopes to support languages that many people speak. It also wants to focus on indigenous languages that are often overlooked by technology.
Try the same news story at these levels:
Google Translate - Level 5 or Google Translate - Level 6
Sources- https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/11/google-translate-adds-24-new-languages-including-its-first-indigenous-languages-of-the-americas/
- https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61416757
- https://www.engadget.com/google-translate-24-language-expansion-171810853.html
Make sure you try all of the online activities for this reading and listening - There are dictations, multiple choice activities, drag and drop activities, sentence jumbles, which word activities, text reconstructions, spelling, gap fills and a whole lot more. Please enjoy :-)