В Google Translate добавят 110 новых языков

Google Translate, breaks down language barriers, helping people communicate and better understand the world around them. The Internet giant is constantly introducing the latest technology to ensure that more people have access to this tool: in 2022, they added 24 новых языка using the Zero-Shot Machine Translation approach, where a machine learning model learns to translate into another language even if it doesn’t see an example.

Google also announced the 1000 Languages initiative, which involves the creation of artificial intelligence models that will support the world’s 1000 most common languages.

Today, the company is using artificial intelligence to expand the variety of languages supported. Thanks to the large language model PaLM 2, the team is starting to add 110 new languages to Google Translate, the largest expansion ever.

Translation support for more than half a billion people

Languages ranging from Cantonese to Kekchi are spoken by more than 614 million speakers, providing access to translation for about 8% of the world’s population. Some of these languages are among the world’s largest languages with more than 100 million speakers. Other languages are spoken by small indigenous communities, and some have almost no native speakers, but active efforts are underway to revive them. About a quarter of the new languages originated in Africa, the largest expansion of African languages to date, including Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Ga, Swati, Venda, and Wolof.

Here are some of the new languages that will be supported in Google Translate:

• Afar is a tonal language spoken in Djibouti, Eritrea, and Ethiopia. Of all the languages launched this time, Afar had the most input from the volunteer community.

• Cantonese has long been