Exploring the World’s Languages with Language Explorer (New Research Tool From Google Research)
From a Google Research Blog Post:
Building products that reflect the world’s linguistic diversity takes far more than software engineering; it requires close collaboration with the communities we aim to serve, building in a way that’s deeply aligned and respectful of local communities, heritage, history, values and context.
But gathering this data is only one part of the journey. Preserving language vitality requires working closely with native speakers, academic institutions, and cultural organizations. Partnerships, such as our coalition with the Gates Foundation, ensure that modern digital tools reflect the nuances and authentic voices of their communities. Expanding language coverage responsibly also requires deeply understanding linguistic diversity on a global scale. This approach enables products like Gboard, our Android keyboard, to support 900+ language varieties.
To better appreciate the breadth and complexity of this speech diversity, we’ve been working on a tool to help visualize the world’s linguistic diversity, inspired by earlier visualization initiatives like Google Earth.
The Language Explorer is an interactive web platform designed to let researchers, educators, and language enthusiasts discover and visualize linguistic diversity around the world. Developed as part of our 1,000 Languages Initiative, the Language Explorer brings together data across thousands of languages, building on our open-source LinguaMeta dataset.
Learn More, Read the Complete Blog Post
Direct to Language Explorer
Filed under: Associations and Organizations, Data Files, News
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.



