Global by Design

In February of this year, Google Translate surpassed 40 languages.

Six months later, Google added ten more languages, a two-year growth trajectory illustrated below:

Google went from 13 languages to 51 languages in less than 16 months.

Not bad.

And, yes, I’m aware that we must not confuse quantity of translations with quality of translations. Your translation mileage will most certainly vary by language pair. Still, as language pairs go, Google is the only game in town across many.

Here are the 10 most recently added languages:

• Albanian
• Afrikaans
• Belarusian
• Icelandic
• Irish
• Macedonian
• Malay
• Swahili
• Welsh
• Yiddish

On a related noted, 41 of these languages are now incorporated into Google Docs.

• iGoogle: Now in 42 Languages
• Google Translate now in 41 languages
• OpenOffice Swahili Launches While Microsoft Fiddles
• Facebook: From 1 to 100 languages in two years
• Google Translate adds languages; Microsoft adds translation widget
• Olympics Web site adds two languages (at the wire)