Broadening Scope: Google Translate's Aggressive Language Enhancement Plan
Google has taken a significant step forward in breaking down language barriers, announcing the addition of 110 new languages to its translation service. The latest expansion, powered by the next-generation language model, PaLM 2, promises to make communication more accessible and inclusive on a global scale.
The new languages represent over 614 million speakers worldwide, potentially opening up translation services to approximately 8% of the global population. The diverse range of regions and populations now included in Google Translate spans from Benin to Swaziland, encompassing Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Wolof, Siswati, Tshivenda, Afar, NKo, Tamazight, and many more.
Notably, the inclusion of Siswati and Tshivenda in Google Translate brings the total number of supported South African languages to nine out of twelve. South African Sign Language (SASL) was also added to the service in July 2023.
Google prioritizes the most commonly used varieties of each language in its expansion, ensuring that the majority of speakers can benefit from the service. The company continues to partner with expert linguists and native speakers to support more language varieties and spelling conventions.
In recent months, Google Translate added live translation mode for over 70 languages, including Arabic, Hindi, Korean, and Tamil. These languages have most speakers in countries such as India (Hindi, Tamil), South Korea (Korean), and many Arab-speaking countries (Arabic). The new real-time conversation and noise-filtering features have been well-received, making it easier for users to converse with others who speak different languages.
The technological backbone of this expansion is Google's next-generation language model, PaLM 2, which boasts enhanced multilingual, reasoning, and coding capabilities. The model has proven particularly useful in the expansion, enabling more efficient translation and learning of closely related languages.
Google's ongoing effort to expand language support is part of its 1,000 Languages Initiative, which aims to build AI models supporting the world's 1,000 most spoken languages. The company remains committed to this goal, as they strive to bring us closer to a world where language barriers are a thing of the past.
Google's communications manager, Siya Madikane, expresses excitement about the expansion, stating that it will make a significant impact on the way people communicate across the globe. The company looks forward to continuing to advance its language support as technology continues to evolve.
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