Google Translate uses AI to introduce 110 new languages

June 28, 2024:

Google Translate will introduce 110 new languages, thanks to a large AI learning model that helps to expand the variety of languages on offer.

As part of Google’s 1,000 Languages Initiative – a commitment to build AI models that will support the 1,000 most spoken languages around the world – the company has announced plans to roll out 110 new languages on Google Translate in the largest expansion ever. For comparison, 2022 saw just 24 new languages added at once, using another less powerful machine learning model that learns to translate without ever seeing an example.

What new languages have been introduced to Google Translate?

The 110 new languages represent more than 614 million speakers, accounting for roughly 8% of the world’s population. They range from major world languages to ones spoken by small communities of Indigenous people, and even a few with almost no native speakers but are actively being revitalized.

Roughly a quarter of the new languages originate from Africa, representing Googel Translate’s largest expansion of African languages to date, including Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Ga, Swati, Venda, and Wolof. They include:

Afar, a tonal language spoken in Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia
Cantonese, which has long been one of the most requested languages for Google Translate
Manx, the Celtic language of the Isle of Man
Punjabi (Shahmukhi), the variety of Punjabi written in Perso-Arabic script (Shahmukhi), and the most spoken language in Pakistan
Tamazight (Amazigh), a Berber language spoken across North Africa, with support for both the Latin script and Tifinagh script
Tok Pisin, an English-based creole and the lingua franca of Papua New Guinea

Google has made it a priority to focus on the most commonly used varieties of each language. However, the speed at which all the 110 languages could be added is due to PaLM 2. It allowed for the efficient learning of languages that are closely related to each other, including languages close to Hindi, like Awadhi and Marwadi, and those close to French creoles like Seychellois Creole and Mauritian Creole.

This is just part of Google’s efforts to incorporate AI more closely into its services, with the recent introduction of impressive AI chatbots and AI-powered features expected to be standard across Chromebooks.

Featured image: Unsplash

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