Google Translate has added support to several South Asian languages including Nepali. Now native speakers of Nepali will easily be able to translate text and webpages in other supported languages, to their native tongue. This translation is also reversible and you can convert Nepali to other supported languages. Nepali has an estimated 42 million native speakers. Adding this translation feature will increase the accessibility option for Nepali users.

Try visiting http://translate.google.com and try this out for yourself. You will have to enter some text in the left text-box in some other language, making sure that the language is identified by Google. You can also specify the language that you are inputting. Then on the right, select “Nepali” from the options and then click on Translate. You can reverse this and translate from Nepali to other languages like German, English etc. This same feature is also available in Google Translate Android app.

For typing in Nepali, just use the textbox when Nepali is selected as the source. Your script will be phonetically converted to Nepali. This Nepali typing feature is even integrated in this website. You can also click the option button present in the bottom left of the input text box to bring out a traditional Nepali keyboard or a Romanized Nepali Keyboard.

Now that Nepali language has been added to Google Translate, users will be able to convert around 80 languages to and from Nepali. This is great considering the fact that there are a large number of Nepali users, who could do so much more with this new feature. People can now convert their favorite websites to Nepali or convert their chunks of text to Nepali. The translation feature can also be used as English to Nepali or a Nepali to English dictionary.

But we should keep in mind that this feature has just been rolled out. The feature is still in its fresh stages. That means that the translations are far from perfect. It translates most common words with near perfection. But, when paragraphs and websites are being translated, the problems start showing up. Not all the words are translated and those which are translated are hard to understand. But the good thing is that, this will get better with time.

Google’s translation engine can be contributed by anyone. Even you can find the text that says “Please help Google Translate improve quality for your language here” on Google Translate webpage (link above) and click on the “here” part to be redirected to a special page. Currently, from there you will be able to contribute your feedback by rating the translations that are shown to you. As more and more people provide this feedback, it will contribute towards improving translations to and from Nepali in the future.