Google adds Tulu language to its translation service

Mangaluru: Google, a leading global information technology company, has included the Tulu language in its translation services.

On June 27, Google announced that it had added a total of 110 languages to its Google Translate service.

From now on, anyone wishing to understand words in Tulu can use Google Translate to find meanings from any language to Tulu and vice versa.

Despite governments still not recognizing Tulu as an official state language or including it in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, the inclusion of Tulu by a multinational IT company has been praised as a great honor for millions of Tulu speakers.

“This achievement comes after many days of effort. A large amount of Tulu words and sentences had to be fed into the machine learning system. Recognizing the significance of Tulu, spoken by over 2.5 million people, this inclusion has been made. It is a significant step,” said IT expert U.B. Pavanaja.

How was it included?

Languages are included in Google Translate based on Natural Language Processing (NLP). There are two types: rule-based and statistical-based. Statistical-based translation requires a large corpus of data. Around 2 million sentences, including nouns and verbs, were translated and fed into the machine learning system. The machine learns and translates the language and keeps improving with usage.

With Tulu’s inclusion, tools needed for Wikipedia translation may also become available in Tulu. Currently, these tools are available for Kannada. Developing these tools will further enrich Tulu translations, said Pavanaja.

“Currently, Tulu translation is in a somewhat nascent state. There are some errors, and to improve them, users should provide correct options in the feedback section instead of trolling on social media with screenshots. The translation service is currently available only on the web, but it may soon come to the Google Translate app,” added Pavanaja.

“The inclusion of Tulu in Google Translate is a global recognition for the language and a cause for celebration among Tulu speakers. It is common for some words to be incorrectly referenced in Google Translate. In such cases, users should provide the correct words in the feedback column. Google will rectify it over time. Proper use of this feature will benefit both Tulu speakers and non-speakers,” said Taranath Gatti Kapikad, President of the Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy.