Google speech recognition can now understand Georgian

Georgian was one of the 30 new languages that were added to the Google recognition system today.
Agenda.ge, 14 Aug 2017 - 16:11, Tbilisi,Georgia

Google speech recognition can now support the Georgian language, Google announced today.

Adding Georgian to Google speech recognition system means that some powerful Google products, including Voice Search, the Assistant and Gboard which is capable of typing up entire messages based on what is dictated to it, can now be enjoyed by about 4 million Georgians in their native language.

Georgian was one of the 30 new languages that were added to the Google recognition system today.

"Using your voice to dictate a message can be up to three times faster than typing. With this in mind, today we’re bringing voice typing (aka talking to your phone instead of typing) to 30 languages and locales around the world, covering more than a billion people”, Daan van Esch, Google Technical Program Manager said.

With this update, Google’s speech recognition supports 119 language varieties, in Gboard on Android, Voice Search and more.

"To honor languages around the world, speech recognition will support ancient languages such as Georgian, which has an alphabet that dates back to the 10th century”, Daan van Esch added.

To incorporate 30 new language varieties, Google specialists worked with native speakers to collect speech samples, asking them to read common phrases. This process trained Google machine learning models to understand the sounds and words of the new languages and to improve their accuracy when exposed to more examples over time.

These new languages are also available starting today in the Cloud Speech API and will soon be available across other Google apps and products, including the Translate app.