It was weeks ago but we didn´t mention here. Greek, Japanese, Ukrainian, Finnish and Hungarian translations of Forvo are completed.

We are working on 10 more languages to release before the end of 2010, including Persian, Catalan, Romanian, Korean, Bulgarian, Turkish or Norwegian. If you feel you can help a bit on that you will be very welcome to the translation family.

I have to admit that Forvo Translate started as a joke… Could we do a Translation service better than Google´s? The answer was yes. And we did it :)

Using Forvo´s API, we´ve added to Google Translate the only this is wrong with it: Human pronunciations.

Sure, Google have made a great job with their text-to-speech voice synthesis but if you speak other than English the results are just hilarious. Furthermore, Google have pronunciation enabled for just couple of languages. Forvo covers the 57 languages of Google Translate, and about 200 more possible to come.

So we are now introducing Forvo Translate. It´s almost the same that Google Translate but with authentic native pronunciation. Why don´t you give it a try and comment your thoughts on it?

Or maybe you will enjoy more this presentation of Forvo Translate by Ilmostro a Forvo Editor:

Ask yourself this… would you employ C-3PO to teach you Wookiee, if you could have Chewbacca do it?

The answer is NAAAAAAAAAAAAWGH

While we have yet to figure out how to take recordings from irascible aliens, we can already upload thousands of human pronounced words on your mobile… or android. Don’t take chances with artificial voices, go for the real thing!

Nobody worries about upsetting a droid, but you don’t want to upset a Wookiee by saying things wrong, do you?”

Stop Androids. Get Human.

New languages come in pairs. We mentioned German in our latest post but also Dutch was released. It was an awesome work from more than 20 people that joined their effors to complete these translations. Thanks!

These are the other languages currently been translated: Finnish, Polish, Romanian, Hindi, Japanese, Danish and Hungarian. So we hope to have Forvo translated into your language soon!

Maximum speed at Forvo HQ. After ending the beta stage, now we are happy to announce the first steps of our long-waited API. We have opened a new site to give you more information about it and also to start receiving your pre-inscriptions. If you plan to make your site much interesing using Forvo pronunciations don´t wait to ask for your free API key.

We are quite excited about the news projects and posibilities that the API is giving to you. Pronunciations for your dictionary? A better Google Translate with real human pronunciations? Whatever you want.

Last week also saw the light the German translation of Forvo. We have translated, with your help, Forvo into 11 languages and 5 more are under development. Thanks!

Another big milestone in Forvo development: we are now releasing Forvo in Arabic. This is the first language we not only translate but adapt the layout to the right to left writing. Thanks to our dear editor jasmen who has guided us in all the translation process.

This is the amazing look of Forvo in Arabic but the best is that you check it online for yourself and don´t doubt to report any problem you find.

Almost everyday we find a new article or post about Forvo, here are some recent highlights:

- BBC.co.uk, in Persian.
- Habrahabr, in Russian.

What about new languages? We are working on these translations, if you want to collaborate it will be really appreciated:

- German (91% translated)
- Dutch (95% translated)
- Romanian (46% translated)
- Hindi (60% translated)
- Polish( 58% translated)

You have also a new way to stay in touch with Forvo news, our brand new Google Buzz profile. See you there!

Good news: We are very happy to announce the release of Forvo in Portuguese, Italian and French!

As promised by the end of the year we would have more languages available and here it is the first one. The delay until the very end of the year was not intentional anyway. ;)

We have to thank to the editors (Heracleum, spl0uf, emanuelJoab and Diônifer Alan) who have translated Forvo into these languages and also the rest of them who are making a great work in other languages too. Expect new languages in the next weeks, days, or even hours.

And remember, if you want to help to translate Forvo to more languages you just have to ask for it. We´ll set up a translator account for you in minutes.

We have introduced a new lovely feature: translations for each word. Thanks to the Google Translate service, now from every word page you will see that word translated from the original language (more than 50 languages in google´s tool) to the interface language (spanish and english at this moment).

So if translations are not perfect blame Google :)

All Forvo members hope you will enjoy and learn more with this new feature.