Why Has Sanskrit Not Been Added to Google Translate?

[Swarup Bhai]

Sanskrit is a language of tremendous importance in the world, and is making a rapid come back into spoken usage the world over. Indeed if Latin, which almost no one speaks today, has been given a presence in Google Translate, then Sanskrit should certainly as well. There is no need indeed to compare the two languages as both have great stature and importance in the world. But surely if Latin is to be included, then Sanskrit is at least as needed. I would hope that Sanskrit will be included soon. I myself teach Sanskrit as a spoken language. I teach five separate classes each week, and Google Translate would be of tremendous use to both my students and me. And I know literally hundreds of such classes currently ongoing in the US, Europe, and India, whose students constitute a rapidly growing world community of Sanskrit speakers, and who would surely make huge use of Google Translate with Sanskrit, were it available.

[Vishvas Vasuki]

Great idea!

My speculation as to why this lapse might have arisen: Generic machine translation algorithms require a large amount of readily available digitized bilingual text (without sandhi euphonic combinations) - the more complex the language, more the training data required.

[Swarup Bhai]

So does the presence of such a challenge indicate that it is going to continue to prevent Sanskrit's presence in Google Translate? Or, what would be needed to make this wonderful tool available for Sanskrit speakers? And could the process be facilitated somehow?

[Usha Sanka]

Namaste

I was wondering about same issue. Thanks for raising this. Someone had raised similar issue about wiki some time ago. May be that and many more areas can be resolved by this tool.

Developing translation-tool for Samskrt is not a one-step process, agreed.

There are separate efforts going on to develop individual sandhi-breakers, samasa-machines etc. in different institutions all over our nation. Tools on different platforms, based different criteria, once combined for the goal might work. Later we can improve the quality based on problems areas feed back.. and testing. 

There was a PhD on an English-Samskrt translation tool developed by a person I know- which works on basic level English- 5th standard text book stuff. The conclusion was -"because of Samskrt language qualities, making it is not even half as tough as for Hindi etc."

It will be very delightful and excellent experience to see Samskrt in the list. 

Samskrt NLP and coders world can contribute much easily to this. Once task set, issues discussed, steps defined, direction decided, then individual hands can work wonders. I do not think it is that far a goal now. Only thing is common direction on computational and language ground. We can proceed from first simple then to difficult level.

If anyone has experience in developing other language translation tools, they can advise and guide. 

Thanks again for the concern shown.

-इत्थं विनीता

-उषा

[Swarup Bhai]

Fascinating-- many thanks for your educational input on this Usha Bhagini. You give me hope that indeed this can be done!

I would also be very interested to see input on this thread from others as well, either those directly involved in work with Sanskrit, or those whose purview lies more in the computer/programming world. Taking such a multidisciplinary approach as described above by Usha Bhagini, surely the task of setting up a facility for Sanskrit in Google Translate could be accomplished.

[Ken]

Google translate detects all Devanagari scripted languages as Hindi.Also it doesn't produce accurate translation as needed but serves as a instant dictionary for all world languages.A presence of Sanskrit in Google Translate may serve as a great dictionary for all Indian languages with standard Roman transliteration tool.

https://translate.google.co.in/#auto/en/%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%86%E0%A4%B5%20%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%82%20%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%86%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%82%20%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%B8%20%E0%A4%9A%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%82%E0%A4%B0%20%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%8D%20%E0%A5%A4%0A%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%86%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%80%20%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%82%20%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%83%E0%A4%B7%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A3%E0%A4%82%20%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%86%20%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%8D%20%E0%A5%A5%E0%A5%A7%E0%A5%A5

[Usha Sanka]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dwS4CZzgZwmvoB9pAx4A6Yytmv7itk_XE968RMiqpMY/pub

Sure bhrAtaH,

First it seems we need to form community ourselves before we can start volunteering. 

Have you any idea about how Google people go about the process exactly?

I mean the steps involved in translation process - do we or Google people do it? How are other languages done? Is it that we provide stuff and they add it into machine? Or - I am a total illiterate in that. So please give guidance if anyone knows about it.

This is what Google Translate says about adding New Language. (Got to see this with the help of a Samskrta-bhrAtaH)

------------------------

Google Translate currently supports 90 languages and we hope to add more languages in the future. Here are some of the indicators for a strong candidate language:

• It’s a written language
• It’s a language and not a dialect
• It’s actively used on the web together with translations into other languages (news articles, multilingual websites, books, government pages and so on)

• by “actively” we mean there are millions of translated words available

• Speakers of the languages are eager to partner with us and offer their language expertise through Community tasks 

[Jesse Scherer (Google Cloud Support)]

Hi Usha, and thank you for that link.

I do not have a lot of details about the process of getting a new language into Translate, but I have let the engineering team know that there is interest in Sanskrit and asked that it be added to the Translate Community system (https://translate.google.com/community) It seems like this is the first step to allow people who are interested in Sanskrit to assemble the needed information.

Regards,

Jesse

[Swarup Bhai]

Many thanks to both of you Usha Bhagini and Jesse.
I would be very interested indeed to see this idea move forward.
Support/input/contributions from others in this regard will also be deeply appreciated.

[Ken]

Hi Jesse,

Sanskrit can easily be added  to Google translate the way Marathi language was added in year 2013.

http://www.medianama.com/2013/05/223-google-translate-marathi/

Google also needs standard Roman pronunciation system in transliteration form for Hindi,Gujarati and English

for example INTRODUCTION  can be written

introduction /intradakshan /इन्ट्रडक्शन /ઈન્ટ્રડક્શન

These schemes can be merged to one standard pronunciation scheme.

ˌintrəˈdəkSHən /Inṭraḍakśana /Īnṭraḍakśana >>intradakshan

where ə/a schwa