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Google Translate adds support for 110 new languages

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Google is adding 110 new languages to its Translate tool, courtesy of the PaLM 2 AI model. Following the upgrade—the biggest to come to the tool ever—Google Translate will now support 243 languages. All new languages are accessible on the Google Translate Android or iOS apps and the website.

Most of the added languages, which include Afar, Cantonese, Manx, NKo, Tok Pisin, and a variant of Punjabi, among others, are rather popular and are spoken by hundreds of millions worldwide. PaLM 2 is better at learning languages that are related or close to one another. These include languages close to Hindi, like Awadhi and Marwadi, and French creoles, like Seychellois Creole and Mauritian Creole.

Google also highlighted how the search giant decides on language varieties. Since many languages have no one standard form, Google’s approach has been to “prioritise the most commonly used varieties of each language.” The result is support for languages representing more than 614 million speakers, opening up translation capabilities for around 8% of the world’s population.

Google isn’t just prioritising the masses here, either. Other languages added in the overhaul also include ones spoken by small communities of Indigenous people, with few having almost no native speakers but “active revitalisation efforts.” About a quarter of the new languages come from Africa, marking the company’s largest expansion of African languages yet. These include Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Ga, Swati, Venda, and Wolof.

Even before large language models became mainstream, Google was actively adding new languages to the translate tool, including the 24 new languages added in 2022 using Zero-Shot Machine Translation. The search giant is also working towards its 1,000 Languages initiative, a commitment to build AI models that support the 1,000 most spoken languages in the world.

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Yadullah Abidi

Yadullah Abidi

Yadullah is a Computer Science graduate who writes/edits/shoots/codes all things cybersecurity, gaming, and tech hardware. When he's not, he streams himself racing virtual cars. He's been writing and reporting on tech and cybersecurity with websites like Candid.Technology and MakeUseOf since 2018. You can contact him here: yadullahabidi@pm.me.

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