Google Translate Toolkit Translates into Māori language

October 15, 2009

Google Translate Toolkit Translates into Māori language

Google announced today. It was made possible by Dr Te Taka Keegan of the University of Waikato while on secondment to Google. Google Translate Toolkit is a translation tool that is edited by humans not automated by computers such as Google Translate.

Google Toolkit relies on the community to add words and translations. It then stores these translations and uses them for future translations. For example if a familiar sentence is offered for translation, the Google Toolkit will be able to translate it based on its memory of the sentence.

At the moment Google Toolkit appears to have very minimal input for Māori language. I could not seek an automated translation on several basic documents and web sites including Google own media release about supporting Māori.

People with word lists, and electronic dictionaries can upload their resources to the Google Toolkit to grow the Māori corpus. I encourage anyone who has such resources to do so. If you are technically unable to do so, please contact me and I will prepare the material for you.

Docs, html, web sites and pdf files can be translated via Google Toolkit.

Once translations are made they can be stored in a public file for public suggestions. These suggestions can then be edited to correct mistakes, add macrons or grammar.

The benefit of Google Toolkit would be that when more translations and corpus are added to the Google Toolkit the more quickly we could have documents translated into te reo Māori on the fly.

We are finally one step closer to automated Māori translations. A dream that for so long was only a dream.
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DISCLAIMER: This post is the personal opinion of Dr Karaitiana Taiuru and is not reflective of the opinions of any organisation that Dr Karaitiana Taiuru is a member of or associates with, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

One response to “Google Translate Toolkit Translates into Māori language”

Mark Larbey

July 28, 2019

Just imagine a world where anyone can watch a video and understand what is being said regardless of language spoken.

We have such a system in place. It works via automated and manual translation services and captions the any video accordingly, however we are struggling to locate an automated translation system that includes Maori which will allow us to provide a comprehensive video collaboration system to the health sector.

We are continuing to work on this but until the language is made more readily available then communities will not be able to receive the benefits of collaborative video.

My question is this. Is there a maori translation service in New Zealand that has a viable auto translation service or even a manual one that has can guarantee a 2 to 3 hour turnaround?

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