Scotland's languages minister has welcomed the addition of Gaelic to Google's Translate service.

Google has added Scots Gaelic and 12 other languages to its catalogue of 103 dialects available for automatic translation.

Alasdair Allan wrote on his Facebook page: "Gaelic is part of our identity and culture and is used every day in communities across Scotland, and I welcome Google's move to make the language more accessible to people around the world.

"Our aim is to increase the numbers learning, speaking and using the language and hope that the Google Gaelic translation tool can make an important contribution towards this."

Google said it relies on its Translate Community, to which more than three million people have contributed, and machine learning that scans the web for existing translations for its service.

The company said Translate now covers 99% of languages used by the online population.

Among the other languages added are Corsican, Kyrgyz, Hawaiian, Kurdish and Luxembourgish.