Announcing four new languages: Konkani, Maithili, Sindhi and Sinhala
Microsoft Translator now supports a total of 16 Indian languages
Today, we are delighted to announce that we have added three new Indian languages to Microsoft Translator – Konkani, Maithili, and Sindhi. Along with this, we are also adding support for Sinhala, the official language of Sri Lanka. With this latest release, Microsoft is further democratizing access to information in native languages for India. This brings our total number of supported languages to 128 and adds language support for 16 Indian languages including Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.
Text translation for the four new languages is available now in the Microsoft Translator apps, Office, and Translator for Bing. Using Translator, a Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service, you can add Indian languages’ text translation to your apps, websites, workflows, and tools; or use Translator’s Document Translation feature to translate entire documents, or volumes of documents, in a variety of different file formats preserving their original formatting. You can also use Translator with Cognitive Services, such as Speech or Vision, to add additional capabilities such as speech and image translation into your apps.
About the Konkani language
Konkani is primarily spoken by over 2 million people in the states of Goa, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. It is also spoken by a significant number of people in other parts of India, such as Kerala and Gujarat.
English | Konkani |
Hello | हॅलो |
My name is… | म्हजें नांव आसा… |
I’m from… | हांव हांगाच्यान… |
Learn more about Konkani on Bing.
About the Maithili language
Maithili is spoken by over 75 million people in India and Nepal. Popularly written in Devanagari script, it has its own script variously called Mithilakshara, Tirhuta, and Maithili. Maithili is mainly spoken in the northern regions of Indian state of Bihar, in parts of the state of Jharkhand and in the Terai regions of Nepal. The development of Maithili was championed by Dr. Girish Nath Jha, professor of Computational Linguistics at the School of Sanskrit & Indic Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India), Dr. Ritu Nidhi and their team of research students. We collaborated closely with the JNU community who helped with their expertise in machine translation and resource creation.
English | Maithili |
Hello | नमस्कार |
My name is… | हमर नाम थिक… |
I’m from… | हम अहिठाम सँ छी… |
Learn more about Maithili on Bing.
About the Sindhi language
Sindhi is spoken by over 20 million people in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan.
English | Sindhi |
Hello | سلام |
My name is… | منهنجو نالو آهي… |
I’m from… | مان کان آهيان… |
Learn more about Sindhi on Bing.
About the Sinhala language
Sinhala is spoken by over 16 million people in Sri Lanka, as well as in other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore.
English | Sinhala |
Hello | ආයුබෝවන් |
My name is… | මගේ නම… |
I’m from… | මම … සිට |
Learn more about Sinhala on Bing.
What you can do with Microsoft Translator
At home
Translate real-time conversations, menus and street signs, websites, documents, and more using the Microsoft Translator app for iOS and Android. Learn more
At work
Globalize your business and customer interactions with customizable text and document translation using Azure Cognitive Services Translator. Learn more
In the classroom
Create a more inclusive classroom for both students and parents with live captioning and cross-language understanding. Learn more