Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, and an API that helps developers build browser extensions and software applications. As of , Google Translate supports languages and language varieties at various levels. It served over 200 million people daily in May 2013, and over 500 million total users , with more than 100 billion words translated daily.
Launched on April 28, 2006 as a statistical machine translation service, it originally used United Nations and European Parliament documents and transcripts to gather linguistic data. Rather than translating languages directly, it first translated text to English and then pivoted to the target language in most of the language combinations it posited in its grid, with a few exceptions including Catalan–Spanish. During a translation, it looked for patterns in millions of documents to help decide which words to choose and how to arrange them in the target language. In recent years, it has used a deep learning model to power its translations. Its accuracy, which has been criticized on several occasions, has been measured to vary greatly across languages. In November 2016, Google announced that Google Translate would switch to a neural machine translation engine – Google Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) – which translated "whole sentences at a time, rather than just piece by piece. It uses this broader context to help it figure out the most relevant translation, which it then rearranges and adjusts to be more like a human speaking with proper grammar".
History Google Translate is a web-based free-to-use translation service developed by Google in April 2006. It translates multiple forms of texts and media such as words, phrases and webpages.
Originally, Google Translate was released as a statistical machine translation (SMT) service. The input text had to be translated into English first before being translated into the selected language. Since SMT uses predictive algorithms to translate text, it had poor grammatical accuracy. Despite this, Google initially did not hire experts to resolve this limitation due to the ever-evolving nature of language.
In January 2010, Google introduced an Android app and iOS version in February 2011 to serve as a portable personal interpreter. As of February 2010, it was integrated into browsers such as Chrome and was able to pronounce the translated text, automatically recognize words in a picture and spot unfamiliar text and languages.
In May 2014, Google acquired Word Lens to improve the quality of visual and voice translation. It can scan text or a picture using the device and have it translated instantly. Moreover, the system automatically identifies foreign languages and translates speech without requiring individuals to tap the microphone button whenever speech translation is needed.
In November 2016, Google transitioned its translating method to a system called neural machine translation. It uses deep learning techniques to translate whole sentences at a time, which has been measured to be more accurate between English and French, German, Spanish, and Chinese. Retrieved May 14, 2017 No measurement results have been provided by Google researchers for GNMT from English to other languages, other languages to English, or between language pairs that do not include English. As of 2018, it translates more than 100 billion words a day.
In 2017, Google Translate was used during a court hearing when court officials at Teesside Magistrates' Court failed to book an interpreter for the Chinese defendant.
A petition for Google to add Cree to Google Translate was created in 2021, but it was not one of the languages in development at the time of the Translate Community's closure.
At the end of September 2022, Google Translate was discontinued in mainland China, which Google said was due to "low usage".
In 2024, a record of 110 languages including Cantonese, Tok Pisin and some regional languages in Russia including Bashkir, Chechen, Ossetian and Crimean Tatar were added. The languages were added through the help of the PaLM 2 Generative AI model.
Functions Google Translate can translate multiple forms of text and media, which includes text, speech, and text within still or moving images. Specifically, its functions include: Written Words Translation: a function that translates written words or text to a foreign language. Website Translation: a function that translates a whole webpage to selected languages. Document Translation: a function that translates a document uploaded by the users to selected languages. The documents should be in the form of: .doc, .docx, .odf, .pdf, .ppt, .pptx, .ps, .rtf, .txt, .xls, .xlsx. Speech Translation: a function that instantly translates spoken language into the selected foreign language. Mobile App Translation: in 2018, Google introduced its new Google Translate feature called "Tap to Translate", which made instant translation accessible inside any app without exiting or switching it. Image Translation: a function that identifies text in a picture taken by the users and translates text on the screen instantly by images. Handwritten Translation: a function that translates language that is handwritten on the phone screen or drawn on a virtual keyboard without the support of a keyboard. Bilingual Conversation Translation: a function that translates conversations in multiple languages. Transcription: a function that transcribes speech in different languages. Pronunciation Practice: an interactive, AI-powered pronunciation practice feature on Android that provides real-time, syllable-specific feedback to help users improve speaking skills. Introduced in April 2026. Initially in English and Spanish.
For most of its features, Google Translate provides pronunciation, a dictionary, and listening to translations. Additionally, Google Translate has introduced its own Translate app, so translation is available with a mobile phone in offline mode.
Features
Web interface Google Translate produces approximations across languages of multiple forms of text and media, including text, speech, websites, or text on display in still or live video images. For some languages, Google Translate can synthesize speech from text, and in certain pairs it is possible to highlight specific corresponding words and phrases between the source and target text. Results are sometimes shown with dictional information below the translation box, but it is not a dictionary and has been shown to invent translations in all languages for words it does not recognize. If "Detect language" is selected, text in an unknown language can be automatically identified. In the web interface, users can suggest alternate translations, such as for technical terms, or correct mistakes. These suggestions may be included in future updates to the translation process. If a user enters a URL in the source text, Google Translate will produce a hyperlink to a machine translation of the website. Users can save translation proposals in a "phrasebook" for later use, and a shareable URL is generated for each translation. For some languages, text can be entered via an on-screen keyboard, whether through handwriting recognition or speech recognition. It is possible to enter searches in a source language that are first translated to a destination language allowing one to browse and interpret results from the selected destination language in the source language.
Texts written in the Arabic, Cyrillic, Devanagari and Greek scripts can be automatically transliterated from their phonetic equivalents written in the Latin alphabet. The browser version of Google Translate provides the option to show phonetic equivalents of text translated from Japanese to English. The same option is not available on the paid API version.
Many of the more popular languages have a "text-to-speech" audio function that is able to read back a text in that language, up to several hundred words or so. In the case of pluricentric languages, the accent depends on the region: for English, in the Americas, most of the Asia–Pacific and West Asia, the audio uses a female General American accent, whereas in Europe, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Guyana and all other parts of the world, a female British (Received Pronunciation) accent is used, except for a special General Australian accent used in Australia, New Zealand and Norfolk Island, and an Indian English accent used in India; for Spanish, in the Americas, a Latin American accent is used, while in other parts of the world, a Castilian accent is used; for French, a Quebec accent is used in Canada, while in other parts of the world, a standard European accent is used; for Bengali, a male Bangladeshi accent is used, except in India, where a special female Indian Bengali accent is used instead. Until March 2023, some less widely spoken languages used the open-source eSpeak synthesizer for their speech, producing a robotic, awkward voice that may be difficult to understand.
Browser integration Google Translate is available in some web browsers as an optional downloadable extension that can run the translation engine, which allow right-click command access to the translation service. In February 2010, Google Translate was integrated into the Google Chrome browser by default, for optional automatic webpage translation.
Mobile app
The Google Translate app for Android and iOS supports languages and can propose translations for 37 languages via photo, 32 via voice in "conversation mode", and 27 via live video imagery in "augmented reality mode".
The app was released on Android in January 1, 2010, and on iOS in February 8, 2011, after an HTML5 web application was released for iOS users in August 2008. The Android app is compatible with devices running at least Android 2.1, while the iOS app is compatible with iPod Touches, iPads and iPhones updated to iOS 7.0+.
A January 2011 Android version experimented with a "Conversation Mode" that aims to allow users to communicate fluidly with a nearby person in another language. Originally limited to English and Spanish, the feature received support for 12 new languages, still in testing, the following October.
The 'Camera input' functionality allows users to take a photograph of a document, signboard, etc. Google Translate recognises the text from the image using optical character recognition (OCR) technology and gives the translation. Camera input is not available for all languages.
In January 2015, the apps gained the ability to propose translations of physical signs in real time using the device's camera, as a result of Google's acquisition of the Word Lens app. The original January launch only supported seven languages, but a July update added support for 20 new languages, with the release of a new implementation that utilizes convolutional neural networks, and also enhanced the speed and quality of Conversation Mode translations (augmented reality). The feature was subsequently renamed Instant Camera. The technology underlying Instant Camera combines image processing and optical character recognition, then attempts to produce cross-language equivalents using standard Google Translate estimations for the text as it is perceived.
On May 11, 2016, Google introduced Tap to Translate for Google Translate for Android. Upon highlighting text in an app that is in a foreign language, Translate will pop up inside of the app and offer translations.
API