Google announced that it has added support for the Khmer language to Google Translate. This is the 66th supported language.
The launch comes with the ability to use a virtual keyboard and the ability to read Khmer text phonetically, for users who don’t read the Khmer alphabet.
“Khmer is a challenging language for translation systems for two reasons,” says Google software engineer Arne Mauser. “There isn’t a lot of Khmer data on the web and words are not usually separated by spaces; so in addition to teaching our translation system a new language, it also has to learn how to separate words (what we call segmentation).”
“Over time, we will improve the system and make our Khmer translations better,” Mauser adds. “We constantly improve our algorithm when we find new translations and learn from your alternative translations.”
Google says the language now meets its standards to be launched in Alpha status. It also says that if it doesn’t already support your language, that you can rest assured, they’re working on it.