Celebrating International Translation Day: Meet 3 linguistic experts behind Google Translate

For more than 20 years, Google Translate has helped people break down language barriers. Now, by pairing our latest Gemini models with human perspective, we're turning literal translations into natural conversations. This International Translation Day, meet three Googlers on the Translate team who are bridging the gap between cutting-edge technology and human connection.

Janneke's passion for language dates back to 2002, when she started teaching at an international university in Lithuania. While learning Lithuanian, she began to view language as a reflection of identity and belonging.

Over the next two decades in linguistics, she explored how language shapes self-expression and behavior across lifetimes. She earned a Ph.D. from Stanford and co-authored "African American Language: Language Development from Infancy to Adulthood," which won the Linguistic Society of America's Leonard Bloomfield Book Award.

Today, she brings her expertise to Google Translate, where she leads the team that tests early features with everyday users to ensure translations reflect real, human conversation rather than literal phrasing. Her academic research, which showed that language is constantly evolving, is now being applied alongside our latest Gemini models to ensure Google translations capture the living, dynamic nuance of conversation and not just the literal words.