/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24016884/STK093_Google_05.jpg?w=696&resize=696,0&ssl=1 "Google Translate gets support for over 110 fresh languages")
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The company announced Thursday that Google is adding support for 110 fresh languages to Google Translate. Google Translate previously supported 133 languages, so this expansion — which the company says is its largest ever — marks a significant jump.
Google’s PaLM 2 AI language model helped Translate learn these fresh languages. He was particularly good at learning languages that were related to each other, such as languages ”close to Hindi, such as Awadhi and Marwadi, and French creoles, such as Seychelles Creole and Mauritian Creole,” says Google’s Isaac Caswell – we read in the blog post.
The list of newly supported languages in Translate includes Cantonese, which “has long been one of the most requested languages on Google Translate,” says Caswell. “Because Cantonese often overlaps with Mandarin, finding data and training models is difficult.” Caswell also claims that “about a quarter of new languages come from Africa.”
Most fresh languages are spoken by at least a million people, Caswell says Edge in an interview, while “a few” are said by hundreds of millions of people.