July, 8, 2014
Google announced in a recent blog post that it has added 13 new languages to Gmail, with Afrikaans and isiZulu among them.
Gmail was already available in 58 languages, and in bringing that total to 71 Google said its e-mail application now covers 94% of the world’s Internet population.
The 13 languages added to Gmail are as follows: Afrikaans, Armenian, Azerbaijani (Azeri), Chinese (Hong Kong), French (Canada), Galician, Georgian, Khmer, Lao, Mongolian, Nepali, Sinhala, and Zulu.
“As any native speaker knows, each language has its own nuances, so we worked closely with linguists to make sure the tone and style are just right,” Google said.
As an example, Google highlighted how “inbox” is represented differently for Hong Kong and Taiwan Chinese even though both use traditional Chinese characters.
“You’ll notice that Gmail’s new Chinese (Hong Kong) language uses 收件箱 for ‘Inbox’ instead of 收件匣, which is a word more common in Taiwan,” Google said.
All 13 languages have started rolling out to Gmail on the web and feature phone browsers.
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