There’s no doubt about it: Wikipedia is one of the most informational sites on the entire world wide web. That is, if you know English.
While Wikipedia does have translations for some of its articles, it’s far from enough. Wikipedia is only available in around 300 languages, out of the 7000-some languages spoken all around the world. Not to mention, many of these articles in non-English languages are incomplete, due to the lack of volunteers and funding.
Thankfully, Google has stepped in to save the day, helping the Wikimedia Foundation, a volunteer community that aims to share knowledge around the world. The Foundation has added Google Translate to its content translation tool. Human editors can then use Google Translate to add content to non-English Wikipedia websites, thus achieving the Foundation’s goal of making Wikipedia articles available in more languages.
Moreover, Google Translate is also adding support for 15 more languages, such as Hausa, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Yoruba, Zulu, and more. The generated translations will all be published under a free license and can be added back into Wikipedia.
It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely a start. And right now, in a world that needs more translators and interpreters to disseminate information and knowledge to anyone regardless of their language, that’s all that matters.
