Global tech giant Google has added 24 new languages
spoken by more than 300 million people to its Google Translate
platform. “For years, Google Translate has helped break down
language barriers and connect communities all over the world,”
the US-based company said. It added that it now wants to help
those whose languages aren’t represented in most technology.
The new languages range from Bhojpuri, which is spoken in
northern India, Nepal and Fiji, to Dhivehi, with its estimated
300,000 speakers in the Maldives.
The move now brings to 133 the total number of
languages available on Google Translate as of May 2022. The
company says the new languages also represent a technical
milestone, explaining that they use a machine learning model
which learns to translate into another language without ever
seeing an example. This can be useful for languages where large
datasets of human translations, which can be used to train a
computer, are not available. But the company admits that the
technology isn’t perfect.
So, will the translations be accurate? Some polyglots have
noted problems with the languages already available. “For many
supported languages, the translation is not great. It will definitely
get the idea across but often it will lose much of the subtlety of
the language,” Google Translate research scientist Isaac Caswell
told the BBC.
With the new languages, he said, it would be no different.
But the people who helped in the research said it was a good
place to start. “My impression from other people I have talked to
was that it was a very positive thing for them,” Mr Caswell said.
In 2020, Google Translate added five new languages to the
platform in what was then its first expansion in the past few
years.
Internet: <https://www.bbc.com/>