Google Translate to get 400,000 new Bangla words

Dhaka: The Bangladesh government will add 400,000 new Bangla/Bengali words to Google Translate on its Independence Day on March 26 in a bid to enrich the language on the Internet, media reported on Friday.

"To put Bangla on top of everything, we're going to create history on the Independence Day," said State Minister for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Zunaid Ahmed Palak, according to a bdnews24.com report.

"We'll take Bangla on top by adding 400,000 words to Google Translate on March 26 with participation from everyone from home and abroad," he said.

The initiative, christened "Banglar Jonnyo Char Lakh" (400,000 for Bangla), is being jointly organised by Bangladesh's ICT division, Bangladesh Computer Council and Google Developer Group Bangla.

Palak said that the inclusion of so many words on the Internet in a single day would be a new record.

The state minister said that 65,000 Bangla words were added to Google Translate on February 21, the second highest after Spanish on that day.

Bangladesh Open Source Network's general secretary Munir Hossain said that anyone could add new words or sentences to it by going to the Google Translate website.

Google Translate is a free online language translation service that supports 90 languages, according to Google.

Palak said that about 4,000 people would directly work at more than 50 points across Bangladesh on March 26 to add Bangla words to Google Translate.

Volunteers from Australia, Portugal, the US, Britain and other countries will also join the effort.

Those interested to join the efforts will have to get themselves registered.

Anyone who could add 1,000 new Bangla words would get an electronic certificate from Google, Palak said, adding that the search engine giant would publish the number of Bangla words added to it on March 26.

Moreover, Google will also take the person, who will add the maximum number of Bangla words between February 21 and April 14, on a three-day study tour to its Singapore office.

"(The) collection of Bangla words on the Internet is not that rich even though it is the seventh most spoken language in the world," Palak said.

"We can easily enrich Bangla on the Internet by adding new words to Google Translate," he added.