Microsoft adds five more Indian languages to translator tool

Microsoft India on Thursday announced addition of five more Indian languages to its translator tool to provide real time translation in text mode. This takes the total number of India language available on the translator to 10.

"Microsoft Translator will now offer real-time translation in five additional languages viz., Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam and Punjabi," the company said in statement. The translator already has translation service for Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

"With this, the service will now allow over 90 per cent of Indians to access information and work in their native/preferred languages, making computing language-agnostic and more inclusive," the statement said. Microsoft said its translator app can recognise and translate languages from text, speech and even photos.

"Microsoft is also rolling out support for these languages in the Microsoft Office 365 and the Swiftkey keyboard," it said. The tool will help app and software developers in creating Indian language support in their products and services.

"We have supported Indian languages in computing for over two decades, and more recently have made significant strides on machine translation across languages. With this release, we are bringing in cutting edge machine learning tech to democratise access to information for everyone in India," Sundar Srinivasan, General Manager, Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt. Ltd said. Microsoft also announced support for email addresses in multiple Indian languages across most of its email apps and services.