Google Search Is Becoming More Adept At Delivering Bilingual Results

Google is upgrading how information is presented in two languages in Google search, as well as refining its voice search capability to interpret enquiries that involve a combination of languages.

In Hindi-speaking parts of India, search results in the knowledge graph box and some sections such as “Top stories” and “People also ask” will be presented in both English and Hindi, regardless of which language the user used to do the search. The new bilingual search feature is already accessible in India, with plans to add Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Bengali later this year. Since the function is location-based, you may already have access to it if Google detects that you are in an area of India where Hindi is the majority language.

When speaking Hinglish, Google’s voice search capability is also being upgraded to better distinguish between similar-sounding terms in English and Hindi. The improved voice recognition technology considers the speaker’s accent, ambient noises, context, and speaking styles, allowing users to ask queries in Indian language more naturally. Google has not specified a release date for the new voice recognition algorithm, nor has it stated when it would be made accessible for other hybrid languages and mixed-language questions.

Both features were unveiled on Monday as part of Google’s attempts to establish “a single, unified AI model capable of handling over 100 Indian languages across voice and text,” according to a blog post by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet.
This isn’t Google’s first effort toward supporting multilingual users. Gboard, for example, already supports Hinglish, and you can enable Google Assistant on your device to support several languages. However, these previous language options did not contain Google info boxes such as knowledge graphs, and Google Assistant does not presently accept commands or inquiries that employ several languages at the same time.