It seems that June, for Google, was all about improving how the search engine deals with natural language. On Friday, Google released a giant list of changes it made over the course of June and July. There were 86 entries …

According to UNESCO, at least 43% of the estimated 6,000 languages spoken around the world are facing extinction, and that’s only including the languages they actually have data on. Many of these languages are in remote regions of the world …

The latest factoid to be pulled out of Greenlight’s “Search & Social Survey (2011-2012),” a global survey of 500 people that sought out information about user experiences and behaviors, reveals that many people around the world conduct online searches in …

Pinterest wants to translate their site into other languages and they are seeking translators to assist them. Here’s what they had to say in a blog post: At Pinterest, we’ve always wanted to make it easy for people all over …

They always say that immersion is the best way to learn a foreign language, and a new experimental Chrome extension aims to recreate the feeling of language immersion by mixing up the languages you see while browsing the web. It’s …

Google’s had quite the crush on Malaysia recently. Last week, the company launched a Malaysia-specific domain for YouTube and now they’ve announced that Google Maps will have traffic and transit information for the western Pacific country. The traffic information, which …

Once again, someone is getting in trouble for using the word “niggardly”. On Thursday, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) used the word in response to a question about spending for veterans. He said, in part: “Of course we’re falling short,” he …

Computer scientists in Scotland are developing technology that can translate sign language into text through a simple webcam. The technology, which has the potential to run on variety of camera-enabled digital devices, could be a big help to speech-impaired users …

While most iPhone users I know love talking to Siri–and especially enjoy making her say funny things–the iPhone-based human-like assistant seems even more human in having a flawed, sometimes divisive personality. Criticism of the assistant runs the gamut, from claims …

In January, Twitter added four new right-to-left languages to their Translation Center, the crowdsourcing project that allows users from multiple different languages to help translate Twitter (the service, not the actual tweets). Now, they’ve announced that the work is complete …

YouTube is one step closer to becoming a global video content delivery site by adding four new languages to the site – all of them being regional languages in India. Aditi Rajwanshi, YouTube India partner manager, announced today in a …

Google Translate, Google’s free online language translation tool can help identify languages and instantly translate words, phrases and web pages. Two Oregon State Police troopers recently put this new tool to the test using the app to communicate with an …

Google Analytics users know that the product just underwent a transformation to a new version, and now Google is adding even more accessibility features to the service. Today, Google has added functionality for nine new languages to Analytics. The new …

Twitter has added four new languages to their Translation Center, and in a few months users should be able to participate in the conversation in some right-to-left reading languages. The new languages are Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, and Urdu and users …

So SOPA news will be bursting from your Internets today what with Wikipedia (and others) disappearing till tomorrow. It’s a pretty bold message but it only directly affects the English-language page. But how might users of Wikipedia’s non-English pages be …

Twitter announced today that it has launched in Swedish. The microblogging service or social network – whatever you want to call it – is now available in 21 languages. Twitter says over 400,000 volunteers have contributed to its translation center. …

According to our collective tweets, we are all unhappier than we used to be. If you follow the types of people that I follow, your response might be “Duh.” Cynicism, anger, and even depression are the lifeblood of Twitter, right? …

Google is supporting a new markup for multilingual content. It’s designed to improve handling of the following two scenarios, as described by the company: Multiregional websites using substantially the same content. Example: English webpages for Australia, Canada and USA, differing …

Duolingo’s premise is quite simple. How do you get people to translate the web for free? Their answer is to turn it into an experience that is part game, part language instruction, and all ambitious crowdsourcing. Duolingo is the brainchild …

Spawned from the depths of 4chan, perfected on the pages of reddit, and now coming to a classroom near you? If you’re unfamiliar with rage comics, think of them as cartoons using an ever-growing set of internet memes. Various faces …

One of the biggest draws of the brand new iPhone 4S, besides the faster speeds and better camera, is the voice assistant program Siri (and more generally the speech recognition software). The device comes ready to work with 5 different …