Google announced today that Google Map Maker is now available in 27 languages with more to come. They can’t translate the interface itself into every language, so they have opened up Map Maker in “Google in Your Language” so users can translate it into their preferred language.
The current available languages include:
* Bengali
* Gujarati
* Brazilian
* Portugese
* Croatian
* Dutch
* English
* Filipino
* French
* German
* Greek
* Hindi
* Kannada
* Malayalam
* Marathi
* Oria
* Portugal
* Portugese
* Punjabi
* Romanian
* Russian
* Serbian
* Spanish
* Tamil
* Telugu
* Turkish
* Vietnamese
“This represents the primary or second language of more than a half billion people in the 164 countries covered by Google Map Maker,” Google says in a post at the Lat Long Blog.
In December, Google added 43 new countries to Map Maker and shared an example video of how users have used it to transform a map of Islambad, Pakistan:
Using the settings link at the top right hand side in Map Maker, you can select both the display language and the primary editing language. Google notes that even if you have chosen a editing language, at the time of edit, you can change the language of data entry for each name in the edit in the names section accessible via the Add / Edit details link.
Google has also taken another step toward making maps more accessible. They have made Map Maper maps available in the Google Maps API and as static maps. Users that have Google Maps mashups that are primarily used in one of the 164 countries or those who want to embed a map on their blogs can serve the maps that are updated daily, by switching a parameter in the API. More on that here.
