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--wgbh1c/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.
Really appreciate the effort you put into this. Most posts I’ve read on this topic skim the surface, but you actually went deep. I also check slime rng here when I need a quick reference.
Very nice post. I simply stumbled upon your weblog and wished to
mention that I have really loved surfing around your weblog
posts. After all I’ll be subscribing to your rss feed and I’m hoping you write once more soon!
Pretty portion of content. I just stumbled upon your website and in accession capital to assert that I get in fact loved account your weblog posts.
Anyway I’ll be subscribing on your augment
and even I achievement you get right of entry to consistently
fast.
It’s remarkable for me to have a web site, which is beneficial in favor of my know-how.
thanks admin
I am extremely inspired together with your writing skills as neatly as with
the layout for your weblog. Is this a paid subject matter or did
you modify it yourself? Anyway stay up the excellent quality writing,
it’s uncommon to look a great blog like this one today..