Google Translates into URDU

Google Now Translates into Urdu as well.

This is reproduced here for those who may have missed it. It also has a direct context relating to the purpose of this blog and the Facebook page " Urdu To English ". This as you can see below, this is in addition to the first alpha language " Persian '

Source: Re posted from "The Official Google Translation Blog"

            www.googletranslate.blogspot.com

Five more languages on translate.google.com

Thursday, May 13, 2010 | 3:03 PM

Labels: alpha languages

At Google, we are always trying to make information more accessible, whether by adding auto-captioning on YouTube and virtual keyboards to search or by providing free translation of text, websites and documents with Google Translate. In 2009, we announced the addition of our first “alpha” language, Persian, on Google Translate. Today, we are excited to add five more alpha languages: Azerbaijani, Armenian, Basque, Urdu and Georgian — bringing the total number of languages on Google Translate to 57.

These languages are available while still in alpha status. You can expect translations to be less fluent than for our other languages, but they should still help you understand the multilingual web. We are working hard to “graduate” these new language out of alpha status, just as we did some time ago with Persian. You can help us improve translation quality as well. If you notice an incorrect translation, we invite you click "Contribute a better translation". If you are a translator, then you can contribute translation memories with the Translator Toolkit. This helps us build better machine translation systems especially for languages that are not well represented on the web.

Collectively, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Georgian and Urdu have roughly 100 million speakers. We hope that these speakers can now more easily access the entire multilingual web in their own language. Try translating these and other languages at translate.google.com. Here are some phrases from the new alpha languages to get you started:

Baietz lehenengoan
میں خوش قسمت محسوس کر رہا ہوں 
բախտաւոր եմ զգում
Mən şanslıyam
იღბალს მივენდობი

Good luck my friends, you can now experiment and enjoy till you begin to use it with ease. Until the next post .

Can we participate ? A Tryst with ' History ' .

A casual social evening get-together brings up the subject 

A few months ago, during a conversation with 81 year old C.M. Abdul Raoof Khan, an M.A. in Urdu at the University of Mysore, we happened to casually discuss history. The conversation also happened to include the fine language of Urdu.  He is very passionate about languages Urdu and Farsi (Persian) and it is interesting to note that he acquired his M.A degree in at the mature age of 61.

Sultanat-e-Khudadaad, published in 1937

Coming to the subject of this post, he brought about a very very interesting book that is titled “Sultanat -e- Khudadaad”. It was published in Urdu sometime in 1937 and authored by (Late) M. Mahmud Khan of Bangalore, who was a historian and researcher. This non-fiction book is based on the life of Tippu Sultan, the legendary ruler.

The 1st 2 pages of the 2^nd edition are scanned and placed here:

Make it available in English

This  post seeks to locate an original edition of this book, find out if there are interested individuals to enable the translation of this book into English and have it printed either in hard copy or an e-book edition. As headline of this post says “A Tryst with History”, it is my humble view that in the making of this book, which is rich with history, we can play our role in preserving and making “history” more accessible for future generations.

An approximate outline of the size of the market that Urdu represents in South Asia

Urdu is a major language of South Asia, and it has been gaining in popularity since the independence of the Indian sub-continent. It is one of the 18 national languages of the Union of India as well as the declared national language of Pakistan. Although influenced by Arabic and Persian, but quite unlike Arabic and Persian, Urdu is an Indo-Aryan, language akin to Hindi, which originated and developed in the Indian sub�continent. Both Urdu and Hindi belong to the new Indo-Aryan sharing the same Indic base. At the phonological and grammatical level, they are so close that they appear to be one language, but at the lexical level they have borrowed so extensively from different sources (Urdu from Arabic and Persian, and Hindi from Sanskrit) that in actual practice and usage each has developed into an independent language. This distinction is most marked at the orthographical level, where Hindi uses Devanagari, and Urdu uses the Arabo-Persian script indigenously modified to suit the requirements of an Indo-Aryan speech. According to a general estimate, Urdu and Hindi taken together form the third largest speech community in the world today.

The Urdu speakers in India number almost 44 million (Census of India, 1991) with the largest numbers in the state of Uttar Pradesh, followed by Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka, which together account for 85% of the national Urdu-speaking population. Delhi still enjoys to be the major centre of Urdu literature and publishing. Urdu is also spoken in countries surrounding India and Pakistan, such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Practically, Urdu has become the culture language and lingua franca of the South Asian Muslim diaspora outside the sub-continent, especially in the Gulf and the Middle East, Western Europe, Scandinavia, U.S.A. and Canada." (source: The Urdu Council of India /www.urducouncil.nic.in/pers_pp/index.htm ) Very briefly : the no of urdu speakers in India         :  44 million                   the no. of urdu speakers in Pakistan    :  11 million                   A rough approximation of                   :  55 million Plus if you add the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal the estimates could be higher. In the next post , a background of the time and period in which Urdu was flourishing in its culture and maximum number of books and poetry were penned down.

One little Step.... Mightly Little Progress

A new beggining in this blog, with a  quote on what the subject of this communication is all about:

"It is in books that writers make and have made the most intimate communication. In this format we deal not just in information, but in the subtleties and graduations of life and experience." -
by Shadow Culture Secretary, Ed Vaizey on  a new programe titled "Renaissance for Libraries "


This blog is aimed to communicate, connect and bring in writers, authors, journalists, people who have an interest in promoting and creating a "new range" of Urdu books that are translated into English. The langauage of now and today all over the world. 
I will try briefly in the next post make a humble attempt at providing some statistics at the size of the Urdu speaking market that has within itself all these treasures of writers.