Google Translate Gets More Worldly, Adds Nine Languages

While Google Translate is certainly not perfect in many of its translations, the site is undoubtedly an incredibly useful tool when trying to interpret a word, phrase or entire site in a different language. Today, Google has added nine more languages to Google Translate: Afrikaans, Belarusian, Icelandic, Irish, Macedonian, Malay, Swahili, Welsh and Yiddish, bringing the number of languages that are supported up to 51.

Google says that with the latest addition, the site now supports all 23 of the official EU languages. And following the events in Iran during the elections, Google added Persian (Farsi) to Google Translate. Google warns users that quality of the translation for the new languages is still basic and may have some glitches.

Google has been integrating Google Translate into many of its other applications, most recently adding support for translation in Google Docs. You can also translate emails within Gmail, webpages using Google Toolbar, and RSS feeds in Google Reader. In June, Google launched the Google Translator Kit, which is a translation editor that lets translators make human edits within machine translations.