Microsoft Translator gains text support for 9 more languages

What you need to know

• Microsoft Translator now supports nine additional languages for text translation.
• The newly supported languages are Albanian, Amharic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Khmer, Lao, Myanmar, Nepali, and Tigrinya.
• Several Microsoft apps and services now also support these new languages, including Office and Translator for Bing.

Microsoft Translator and several Microsoft services recently gained support for nine additional languages. Microsoft announced text translation support of Albanian, Amharic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Khmer, Lao, Myanmar, Nepali, and Tigrinya in a blog post. By adding support for these languages, Microsoft Translator can help more than 170 million more people communicate.

With the addition of these nine languages, Microsoft Translator can now translate text to or from a total of 83 languages.

The newly supported languages aren't just available within the Microsoft Translator apps, which are on iOS, Android, and Windows 10. They're also available in Microsoft Office and Translator for Bing. Developers can also use these languages within Translator, an Azure Cognitive Service. Microsoft also supports the nine new languages with its Azure Cognitive Services for speech-to-text translations.

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Microsoft's announcement of the newly supported languages comes only a couple of days after International Mother Language Day, which aims to "promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by peoples of the world," according to the UN.

Text translation support for these languages can help create new opportunities for people to communicate across language barriers. The nine newly supported languages are spoken by more than 170 million people around the world.