Adil Najam
Google Labs has added five new languages to its Google Translate service, including Urdu. I first learnt of the news on ProPakistani yesterday and soon afterward one of our readers, Watan Aziz, left a comment on ATP with a demonstration of the new Urdu Translation tool.
I had already tried out the tool, had my chuckle, and planned this post. Here is how: The current post at ATP at that time was Owais Mughal’s post on the (then) forthcoming T20 Cricket Semi-Final, so I just copied the ‘above the fold’ part of that post and inserted it into Google Translation Urdu. Here is what I got:
The first line that came out of Google Urdu Translate was: “Hum Daikhain Gay.”
Long-time readers of this blog will recognize immediately why I chuckled: The line “Hum Daikhain Gay” is amongst my all-time favorite lines in the Urdu language. Owais Mughal probably did not have that line in mind when he wrote his T20 Cricket post and Google Urdu Translator probably does not care about the significance of the line to Faiz-lovers either. But by virtue of that being the first line I saw on Google Urdu Translator, at least I was off to a positive impression, despite some of the other elements of what came up.
Give Google Urdu Translate a try yourself, and tell us what you think. This now brings the number of languages supported by Google Translate to 57.
P.S. Interestingly, the first non-Latin script domain name, in Arabic script, also just came live: (http://????.?????-?????????.???/). It browsers that cannot handle Arabic script this appears as: http://xn--4gbrim.xn—-ymcbaaajlc6dj7bxne2c.xn--wgb h1c/ar/default.aspx. Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology’s official website (http://www.mcit.gov.eg) via its domain name in Arabic (http://????.?????-?????????.???/) became the first site to gain this distinction and, reportedly, by 2011 domain names will also be available in Urdu.
@Watan. You’re right, the transliteration works great.
Type in: “Pappu yaar. tang na kar ”
and it converts nicely to urdu script: “پپپو یار. تنگ نہ کر”
and you also duly get: “Pappu Yar. Do not disturb” !! as the translation.
PS: Don’t forget the full stop after Yaar – otherwise the translation is different as it is interpreted as one sentence.
Actually, there is another gem in there too.
If you type transliteration of standard Urdu words, and I tested only a few, it will translate the transliteration and produce the Urdu text for it as well as the English translation.
They show the example of “Type phonetically. Example: Type “shukriya” and hit space for “شکریہ”.”
I tried “hum nay tum say kaha” and it returned, “we told you”. This is simply awesome!
It cannot handle the copy and paste yet for transliteration as it expects you to type and it translates on the fly.
But this is just the beginning. (I wonder if it will take the “bignig” the bad Urdu speakers use? hmmmmm, what about birday? or gormint? Well, that is another problem because that is because they believe they are “Urdu speakers”. After all, some of them use “aksford” dictionary.)
At any rate. Thank you Google!
This is a whole new world of Urdu literature. A very welcomed world. And take it from someone who was accused of being “Urdu dushman! (BTW, just tried it, typed in dushman, got enemy!)
What a day!
And as Yakov Smirnoff would say, “what a country!”
Nice…. good to see this has finally happened
Great News – I’ve been waiting for this.
Also try it the other way round – Urdu to English.
I put in:
آدمی اندر سے ٹوٹ جایے بھی
کم سے کم لہجہ توانا چاہیے
غم غلط کرنا کوئی مشکل نہیں
انتقاماً مسکرانا چاہیے
and got out this:
“Man, go inside the broken
Should at least drop tone
No problem grief sully
Vengeance should smile”
Not quite there yet!! But to be fair poetry is hard in any case.
Still, it will get better as it moves from Alpha to final version.
PS: BTW, does anyone know the name of the poet behind this ? I love this little nugget – heard it on PTV long time ago, but can’t remember who wrote it.
Welcome step.. like the post too. But tell honestly, was “Hum daikhay gay” really the first thing that come up for you!