Google learns ten new tongues

Translation service now offers 23 languages

16 May 2008 16:13 GMT / By Katie Scott

The world's becoming a smaller place but language is still a barrier.

But Google is doing its bit adding 10 new languages to its online translation service.

The new entries are Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish,

This brings the total number of languages offered to 23.

The update has also seen the introduction of a new cross-translation tool which means you can translate from French to Bulgarian, instead of putting everything in English, if you need to.

And there is also now a Detect Language option, for all of us baffled as to what language a webpage actually is in in the first place.

Developers can download an AJAX language API that will let them embed Google Translate into their web pages.

Google said: "While our system is quite good, we know it's not perfect" but claims that the ability to translate pages is one of the biggest steps "in making information universally accessible".