Since SMT uses predictive algorithms to translate text, it had poor grammatical accuracy. The input text had to be translated into English first before being translated into the selected language.

Originally, Google Translate was released as a statistical machine translation service. It translates multiple forms of texts and media such as words, phrases and webpages. Google Translate is a web-based free-to-user translation service developed by Google in April 2006. It uses this broader context to help it figure out the most relevant translation, which it then rearranges and adjusts to be more like a human speaking with proper grammar'. In November 2016, Google announced that Google Translate would switch to a neural machine translation engine – Google Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) – which translates 'whole sentences at a time, rather than just piece by piece. Its accuracy, which has been criticized on several occasions, has been measured to vary greatly across languages. During a translation, it looks for patterns in millions of documents to help decide which words to choose and how to arrange them in the target language. Rather than translating languages directly, it first translates text to English and then pivots to the target language in most of the language combinations it posits in its grid, with a few exceptions including Catalan–Spanish. Launched in April 2006 as a statistical machine translation service, it used United Nations and European Parliament documents and transcripts to gather linguistic data. As of 2022, Google Translate supports 133 languages at various levels, and as of April 2016, claimed over 500 million total users, with more than 100 billion words translated daily, after the company stated in May 2013 that it served over 200 million people daily. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, and an API that helps developers build browser extensions and software applications.

Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. November 15, 2016 6 years ago ( ) (as neural machine translation)

April 28, 2006 17 years ago ( ) (as statistical machine translation)

Google translation app