Bangladesh adds 700,000 words to Google Translate in a day

Bangladeshi youths have set a record by adding more than 700,000 words and phrases to Google Translate in a single day to celebrate the Independence day.

An official announcement from Google Inc is yet to be made but State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak broke the news in his Facebook post on Friday.

He congratulated all involved in the post.

“We’ve done it! Our target was 400,000. Setting a record by adding so many words in a day has taken Bangladesh to a new high,” he said.

“Bengalis across the globe could add over 700,000 words and phrases to Google Translate since yesterday, thanks to all who responded to our call. The credit goes to all, the pride is of Bangladesh,” he added.

Over 4,000 volunteers keyed in at least 400,000 words to the translation app  in a day from 81 places in the country .

The initiative, co-organised by the ICT Division, Google Developers Group and Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC), kicked off on Thursday morning at Agargaon.

It ended at 6am on Friday.

It was said adding over 400,000 words in a day would set a record.

Palak said more people from homes worked for the record.

“It is an unofficial announcement of sorts. Google will formally announce the number of words contributed and the record soon,” he said.

On Thursday, the state minister said the Google server had crashed twice after 11am on when about 10,000 users logged in simultaneously.

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

Anyone can add new words or phrases to it by going to http://translate.google.com/community

As many as 65,000 Bangla words were added to Google Translate on Feb 21, the second highest after Spanish on that day.

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