Google Translate has significantly improved its ability to learn new languages, thanks to generative AI. On Thursday, June 27, Google announced that its Translate tool now supports 110 new languages, leveraging the company’s PaLM 2 large language model. This development marks a substantial milestone in the tool’s capabilities.
The latest update includes highly requested languages such as Cantonese, Balinese, Fijian, Portuguese (Portugal), Tahitian, and Tibetan. Furthermore, this expansion is notable for being the largest inclusion of African languages to date, adding Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Ga, Swati, Venda, and Wolof. Check out Google’s help page for the full list of new languages that are supported.
Google aims to support 1,000 of the most spoken languages globally, a goal now appearing feasible due to advancements in AI. The company emphasized that PaLM 2 was instrumental in accelerating the learning process for languages, especially those closely related to each other.
To highlight the speed of these advancements, Google’s last significant update was in May 2022, adding 24 new languages with AI’s help. It took Google approximately 16 years to reach support for 133 languages.
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