Google Translate Adds Support For 110 New Languages Thanks to AI

Google Translate is adding support for 110 new languages today, representing the biggest expansion for the free translation service to date. New languages include Cantonese, Tamazight, Wolof, Punjabi (Shahmukhi), and other major world languages with over 100 million speakers. About a quarter of the new languages come from Africa, Google said.

Google highlighted that this major expansion was made possible by its PaLM 2 large language model, which was trained on parallel multilingual text. This is the same AI model that powers generative AI features in Google Workspace such as email summarization in Gmail and rewriting in Google Docs.

“PaLM 2 was a key piece to the puzzle, helping Translate more efficiently learn languages that are closely related to each other, including languages close to Hindi, like Awadhi and Marwadi, and French creoles like Seychellois Creole and Mauritian Creole,” the company explained today.

Back in 2022, Google announced a new initiative to support the 1,000 most spoken languages with a new AI model. While this effort is still ongoing, these 110 new languages represent more than 614 million speakers. “As technology advances, and as we continue to partner with expert linguists and native speakers, we’ll support even more language varieties and spelling conventions over time,” the company said today.