Microsoft Translator adds endangered Lower Sorbian to its list of supported languages

Microsoft Translator now supports a total of 129 languages after the company added Lower Sorbian with some help from the Sorbian language community. Those who need access to translations in this language can get them through the Microsoft Translator apps, Office, and Translator for Bing. Lower Sorbian is considered a heavily endangered language with less than 7,000 speakers, according to Microsoft.

Other ways you can leverage this support is through the Translator Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service which lets you add Lower Sorbian translation to your apps, websites, workflows, and tools. It also has a Document Translation feature to translate documents to the language while retaining formatting. Additionally, you can use Translator with Cognitive Services to add things like speech and image translation to your apps.

Lower Sorbian is a West Slavic language like Polish or Czech. It’s spoken in eastern Germany in Brandenburg and signs in the area are bilingual. There’s also a high school that teaches the children using the Lower Sorbian language.

Most of the speakers of Lower Sorbian today are older generations and as these people die off, knowledge of the language could decline. By adding support for it to Microsoft Translator, people will be able to continue translating works written in the language or even use the tools to teach more people the language.

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