MSPoweruser
Thursday March 31, 2022
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Translator tools can be helpful, especially when you are
trying to learn a new language. However, not all translators support every
language being spoken around the globe, such as those that belong to small
populations of speakers. This can pose challenges for such groups of people.
Microsoft pushes to resolve that issue by continuously working on improving its
Translator through unceasing updates. And after adding other languages in the
past, such as Bashkir, Dhivehi, Georgian, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, and
more, Microsoft Translator is now offering Somali and Zulu to its growing list
of languages.
To introduce the new languages in the update of the
Translator, Microsoft provided some valuable pieces of information and trivia
about them and even some translated phrases that can be useful for tourists who
might want to visit the areas where the languages are spoken.
“The Somali language is spoken throughout the horn of Africa
by more than 21 million people in Somalia, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and
northern Kenya,” the Microsoft Translator post reads. “The language is in the
Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. It is related to languages
such as Oromo, Afar, and Hadiyya.”
Zulu, on the other hand, is said to be spoken by 12 million
people in South Africa and neighboring countries. “The Zulu language is in the
Bantu language family, related to languages such as Swahili and Xhosa,” the
post continues. “Zulu is a home language of South Africa and is recognized as
one of South Africa’s 11 official languages. The Zulu people are known for
their intricate beadwork, which is used as both decoration and as a form of communication
to convey information about the wearer.”
According to Microsoft, the two new languages added are
already available in the company’s Microsoft Translator apps, Office, and
Translator for Bing. Moreover, the Translator, a Microsoft Azure Cognitive
Service, will allow users to include the Somali and Zulu languages in their
apps, websites, workflows, and tools. In addition, Microsoft emphasized in the
post that it can be used with Cognitive Services such as Speech or Computer
Vision to allow speech-to-text and image translation into the user’s apps.