Google has created an online community where language lovers can contribute their expertise to continually refine Google Translate services.

To make Google's online translation services even better, Google has created an online Translate Community where volunteers can add their personal language expertise to help make the services more accurate for people seeking help with foreign languages.

The new Translate Community was announced by Sveta Kelman, the program manager for Google Translate, in a recent post on the Google Translate Blog.

"Google Translate helps billions of people communicate and learn new languages, but it could always use a little help," wrote Kelman. "Luckily, there are a lot of multi-lingual people around the world who have offered to pitch in. We've just launched a new Translate Community where language enthusiasts can help us improve translation quality for the 80 languages we support, as well as help us in launching new languages."
 
The new Translate user forum will give volunteers the opportunity to create new translations of words and phrases that need to be added, make corrections for existing translations that can be improved and rate existing translations for accuracy, wrote Kelman. "When you spot a translation that you'd like to edit, click the 'Improve this translation' pencil icon and click 'Contribute' to submit your suggestion to us. We plan to incorporate your corrections and over time learn your language a little better."

The Translate Community will also be a place where volunteers will be asked to contribute toward new languages that are added to the service over time, according to a Google FAQ about the service. "While Google Translate is a statistical machine translation tool [you can learn more about it here], we sometimes need help from native speakers to improve our algorithms and learn your language a little better."

So far, Google Translate supports 80 languages from around the world. And while the system works by analyzing a vast amount of previously translated texts available on the Web, sometimes human intervention is also needed to ensure the accuracy of translations for relatively simple words and phrases, according to the FAQs.