Google Translate Adds 110 New Languages With Assistance Of AI

Google announced the addition of 110 new languages to Google Translate, facilitated by artificial intelligence (AI),on thursday. These languages include Cantonese, NKo, and Tamazight, representing over 614 million speakers, roughly 8% of the global 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 revitalisation efforts,” Google stated.

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A quarter of the new languages come from Africa, marking the largest expansion of African languages. On the platform to date, including Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Ga, Swati, Venda, and Wolof.

In 2022, Google added 24 new languages using zero-shot machine translation, where the AI learns to translate into a language without prior examples.

“We announced the 1,000 languages initiative, a commitment to build AI models that will support the 1,000 most spoken languages around the world,” Google added.

Among the new additions, people write Punjabi (Shahmukhi) in the Perso-Arabic script, making it the most spoken language in Pakistan. Tok Pisin, an English-based creole, serves as the lingua franca of Papua New Guinea.

“If you speak English, try translating into Tok Pisin—you might be able to understand the meaning,” Google suggested.