India’s official languages are Hindi and English, and the government also recognizes about 20 other languages. At that time, Google India MD Rajan Anandan said at a press conference that “to reach our goal of 500 million Internet users by 2017 we need to make the Internet accessible to those who don’t speak English.” The Internet giant plans to add other Indian languages to its services, and the addition of Malayalam to Google Translate is a small but noteworthy step toward that goal. The latter is especially significant because it ties into Google’s efforts to get more Indian users onto its services.Įarlier this month, for example, Google launched the Indian Language Internet Alliance, which seeks to increase offerings for Hindi speakers, as well as Hindi voice search. Google’s translation tool is constantly adding new languages, but its latest update is notable because it includes Burmese, the official language of Myanmar, as well as Malayalam, one of India’s six classical languages with 38 million speakers.
