#LoveYourLanguagePH: Celebrate Buwan ng Wika with Translate-a-thon

MANILA, Philippines - In celebration of Buwan ng Wika, Google Philippines kicked-off a month-long nationwide translation campaign called "Love Your Language" with its first translate-a-thon to improve the quality of Filipino and Cebuano translations online.

As part of Google’s mission to make the world’s information accessible and useful to everyone, Filipino netizens can now contribute to the Google Translate Community to help bridge language barriers and bring the local language, culture and content online to share with the rest of the world.

"The Google Translate Community is a platform for Filipinos to express their national pride and love for our local language through their contributions," said Gail Tan, Google Philippines head of communications and public affairs. "Through this dedicated community effort, we believe that the Filipinos can build a web that truly works for them as they make Filipino and Cebuano languages better understood and appreciated online by both native and non-native speakers.”

Google launched Translate in 2006 and has become one of its most popular and useful products, processing a billion translations a day. Ninety-two percent of Translate’s 500 million users are outside the United States of America.

Today, websites, documents, emails and even instant messages can be translated into 90 different languages—including Filipino and Cebuano—instantaneously and for free through Google Translate. The Google Translate Community Tool is its feature for language enthusiasts around the globe to improve translations and even help launch new languages. Google Translate learns from available material on the web and gets smarter as it receives more inputs. 

Throughout August, Google is holding a series of Love Your Language translate-a-thons across the country through several community-led and campus-led events in Bacolod, Baguio, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Dagupan, Davao, General Santos, Guimaras, Halsema, Iligan, Iloilo, La Union, Los Banos, Makati City, Pangasinan, Quezon City and Zamboanga.

Individuals and organizations who want to help translate as part of Love Your Language in the Philippines can get more information and register at https://sites.google.com/site/loveyourlanguagephilippines/ or https://goo.gl/HPwI3Z. Contributing to bettering the overall quality of the Filipino language representation, accuracy and understanding online is as easy as a click or swipe on a mobile phone, tablet or laptop. Participants are encouraged to share their Google Translate Community anecdotes through their social media channels using hashtags #LoveYourLanguagePH or #GoogleTranslatePH.