Popular social networking site Facebook supports it for some time; it is now time for Google’s free online language translation service to support it as well. I am of course talking about the language of the ancient Romans, Latin. Google Translate, the online service that allows you to instantly translate text and web pages, now provides support for Latin.
In a fashion that would make my high school Latin teacher proud, Software Engineer Jakob Uszkoreit announced that Google Translate provides support for Latin in an all Latin blog post entitled Vini, Vidi, Verba Verti (I Came, I Saw, I Translated):
SPONSORED LINKS
“Ut munimenta linguarum convellamus et scientiam mundi patentem utilemque faciamus, instrumenta convertendi multarum nationum linguas creavimus. Hodie nuntiamus primum instrumentum convertendi linguam qua nulli nativi nunc utuntur: Latinam. Cum pauci cotidie Latine loquantur, quotannis amplius centum milia discipuli Americani Domesticam Latinam Probationem suscipiunt. Praeterea plures ex omnibus mundi populis Latinae student,” dixit Ingeniarius Programmandi, Jakob Uszkoreit.
From what I can gather, Jakob Uszkoreit says that Google Translate provides support for numerous languages in order to tear away language barriers and make the knowledge of the world more accessible. The Software Engineer then goes on to say that Google Translate now supports Latin, a dead language that doesn’t have any native speakers anymore. There are plenty of non-native speakers who use Latin though – some one hundred thousand US students, and countless others all over the world.
Putting Google Translate to the test, here is how Jakob Uszkoreit’s announcement looks like after translating the quote above.
“Even as language barriers be torn away and the knowledge of the world is made accessible and useful, translation systems of many languages of the nations were created by us. Today, we announce the first language translation system by which no native speakers now make use of: the Latin. Being but a few speak Latin daily, year by year more than a hundred thousand American students receive the National Latin Exam. Besides many people all over the world study Latin,” said the Software Engineer, Jakob Uszkoreit.
Not the best of translations, I know. Machine translations aren’t exactly perfect. The fact that Latin is a difficult language and that Latin support carries the Alpha tag doesn’t make things easier. In time though Google Translate’s Latin translation capabilities will get better.
Check out Google Translate’s Latin translation capabilities here.
Popular social networking site 
