Google is adding support for 110 new languages to its Google Translate app. Up until now, the app supported 133 languages, marking a significant leap forward in what the company says is its biggest expansion yet.
Google’s PaLM 2 AI language model helped Translate learn these new languages. It’s especially good to learn related languages, such as “near-Hindi languages like Awadhi and Marwadi, and French Creoles like Seychellois Creole and Mauritius Creole,” Google’s Isaac Caswell noted 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,” Caswell said. “Because Cantonese overlaps so much with written Mandarin, it’s hard to find data and train models,” Caswell said, adding that “about a quarter of the new languages come from Africa.”
New languages added to Google Translate app are spoken by hundreds of millions of people
Most new languages are spoken by at least a million people, while a few are spoken by hundreds of millions of people, Caswell told The Verge in an interview.