Google Māori is a Maori-led initiative which was made possible by Google's popular Google in Your Language initiative, which saw the translation of Google's homepage translated into te reo Māori.
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Background
Around the time the Google in Your Language program began, Craig Neville Manning, the New Zealand computer scientist who developed Froogle for reached out to a former colleague at Waikato University, Dr. Te Taka Keegan, with the idea of translating Google into Māori. While working on his doctorate, Te Taka began the translation effort in his spare time. Over the course of the next six years, with the help of several other volunteers, he had covered 68% of the messages.
In 2007 TangataWhenua.com's husband-and-wife team of Potaua and Nikolasa Biasiny-Tule began to project manage the initiative. As project managers they initiated the support of the Māori Language Commission and dozens of volunteers, leading ultimately to all translations being completed within a year—just in time for Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori (Māori Language Week) 2008.
In total more than 1,600 phrases, totaling more that 8,500 words, had been translated.
Launch of Google Māori
Google Māori was launched during Māori Language Week (Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori) in 2008 at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, in Rotorua. Google sent two representatives to the event and it was widely covered by media in New Zealand and around the world.
About Google in Your Language
The Google in Your Language initiative is in line with Google's overall mission of making the world’s information accessible in as many languages as possible. The program began in 2001 and is designed to give anyone the tools to translate Google services into languages in which they are fluent, as a result the Google homepage now appears in more than 100 languages.