What is Google Translate Community?
How do you use my contributions?
Can I correct mistakes while using Google Translate?
How to add a new language to Google Translate?
I have some ideas and suggestions for you. How can I contact you?
What is Google Translate Community?
Google Translate Community (Community) is a platform for language enthusiasts and volunteers interested in improving translation quality for their language or helping us add it to Translate (if we are not yet supporting it). While Google Translate is a statistical machine translation tool (you can learn more about it here), we sometimes need help from native speakers to improve our algorithms and learn your language a little better.
How can I help?
Depending on individual language needs, we’re providing various ways for Community volunteers to contribute and plan on expanding this list over time:
- Translation (translating words and phrases into your language)
- Rating (evaluating translation quality)
- Validation (simple yes/no translation rating task)
- Comparison (choosing a better translation or example)
Translation Task Tips
We heard from many volunteers that translating without context can sometimes be nearly impossible. We agree! Translation without any context is a difficult task but we (Google Translate) face a similar challenge when users enter a fragment into our Translation box. So our best tip here: please provide a translation you as Google Translate user would prefer to receive in the translation result box.
And here are some other tips:
- Capitalization: follow the source and capitalize words that should be capitalized in your language (proper names, acronyms etc.)
- Formal or informal? Choose one form based on the source context ("I'm very pleased to meet you" is likely to be formal, while "how r u doin'?" is likely informal) or choose the register commonly used on the web in your language
- Gender: feminine or masculine? If source has no gender indication, choose a form you'd expect to see in Google Translate or re-phrase to avoid gender selection.
- Infinitive or Imperative? Again, consider what translation you would expect by Google Translate. "Get well soon" or "trust me" are likely to be in imperative form, while "to go for a walk" should use an infinitive form of "go".
- Idioms, slang, movie names, quotes? These can be tough to translate but if you can find a good translation/alternative in your language, don't hesitate to use it.
- Errors in the source? If the meaning is clear despite errors ("how old is you"), please translate it correctly. If the source is meaningless or unclear, please skip.
How do you use my contributions?
While our system works by analyzing a vast amount of previously translated texts available on the web, sometimes we are missing good translations for relatively simple words and phrases, especially given how quickly languages change and evolve these days.
We’ll use your translations to improve quality for your language. To do that, we may show your contributions to other users (without identifying you), so please be careful not to include anything private or sensitive in your translations.
Your translation ratings help us both with selecting a correct translation when we’re unsure which translation variant is better as well as helping us identify recurring issues in our system.
How to add a new language to Google Translate?
Google Translate currently supports 90 languages and we hope to add more languages in the future. Here are some key indicators for a strong candidate language:
- It’s a written language
- 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
Can I correct mistakes while using Google Translate?
Absolutely! When you spot a translation that you’d like to edit, click the "Improve this translation" pencil icon and click "Contribute" to submit your suggestion to us. We’ll use corrections to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future.
I have some ideas and suggestions for you. How can I contact you?
Use link on the bottom of Community pages. We love hearing from you and while we can’t always respond to each comment individually, rest assured that we read every report we’re receiving from Community contributors.
THANK YOU FOR MAKING GOOGLE TRANSLATE BETTER!