Google Translate is getting support for over 110 new languages

Google is adding support for 110 new languages ​​to Google Translate, the company announced Thursday. Until now, Google Translate supported 133 languages, so this expansion – which the company says is the biggest ever – marks a significant leap forward.

Google’s PaLM 2 AI language model helped Translate learn these new languages. It was especially good for learning those that were related to each other, such as languages ​​“close to Hindi, like Awadhi and Marwadi, and French creoles like Seychellois Creole and Mauritian Creole,” said Google’s Isaac Caswell. says in a blog post.

The list of newly supported languages ​​in Translate includes Cantonese, which “has long been one of the most requested languages ​​for Google Translate,” says Caswell. “Because Cantonese often overlaps with Mandarin in writing, finding data and training models is complicated.” Caswell also states that “about a quarter of new languages ​​come from Africa”.

Most new languages ​​are spoken by at least a million people, says Caswell On the edge in an interview, while “several” are spoken by hundreds of millions of people.