Google Translate debuts Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian

by Lou Ann Matossian

Published: Thursday May 27, 2010

Feeling lucky in the Caucasus? Say "Bakhtawor yem zgum." Or "Men sansliyam." Or "Ighbals mivendobi."

That's according to Google Translate, which recently added language support for Eastern Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian. Turkish and Persian (Farsi) came online last year.

Mistakes are to be expected, at least at first. But now that Google's signature phrase "I'm feeling lucky" can be machine-translated with the click of a mouse, Yerevan newspapers can be read more easily in an Istanbul, Baku, or Tbilisi café-and vice versa.

"Today, we are excited to add five more alpha languages: Azerbaijani, Armenian, Basque, Urdu and Georgian - bringing the total number of languages on Google Translate to 57," research scientist Ashish Venugopal announced on May 13 in the product's official blog. ("Alpha" signifies that the translation of that language is in an early stage of development.)

The expanded service gives Diasporan Armenians better access to Web content from the Republic of Armenia, even if their command of the language is limited. Those who speak but don't read Armenian can use Google Translate to romanize the text. If you read but don't speak, the program's synthesized voice will even pronounce it for you.

"You can expect translations to be less fluent than for our other languages, but they should still help you understand the multilingual web," Dr. Venugopal continued. "We are working hard to ‘graduate' these new languages out of alpha status, just as we did some time ago with Persian."

The Google search page in Eastern Armenian, including a new virtual keyboard, can be accessed directly at Google Armenia and Google Armenian, as well as through a link from Google Lebanon, where Western Armenian is spoken.

What about Western Armenian?

As Armenians know, the language has two regional literary standards. Eastern Armenian, the official language of the Republic of Armenia, is the variety most often encountered in diplomacy, commerce, and the Internet.

Western Armenian, a minority language in Turkey, the Middle East, Western Europe, and the Americas, is "definitely endangered," according to UNESCO's Atlas of Endangered Languages.

But if you're feeling lucky in Lebanon ("Pakhtavor g'zkam"), take heart. Google Translate already supports two other "definitely endangered" languages, Irish (Gaelic) and Yiddish. Can Western Armenian be far behind?