110 new languages are coming to Google Translate
Google Translate breaks down language barriers to help people connect and better understand the world around them.
In 2022, Google added 24 new languages using Zero-Shot Machine Translation, where a machine learning model learns to translate into another language without ever seeing an example. And they announced the 1,000 Languages Initiative, a commitment to build AI models that will support the 1,000 most spoken languages around the world.
Now, they are using AI to expand the variety of languages they support. Thanks to their PaLM 2 large language model, they are rolling out 110 new languages to Google Translate, the largest expansion ever.
From Cantonese to Qʼeqchiʼ, these new languages represent more than 614 million speakers, opening up translations for around 8% of the world’s population. Some are major world languages with over 100 million speakers. Others are spoken by small communities of Indigenous people, and a few have almost no native speakers but active revitalization efforts. About a quarter of the new languages come from Africa, representing their largest expansion of African languages to date, including Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Ga, Swati, Venda and Wolof.
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