Google Translate has undergone its most significant expansion, adding 110 new languages. Google credits the PaLM 2 large language model (pre-Gemini 2023) for making this possible.
PaLM 2 was crucial to the puzzle, helping translation learn closely related languages more efficiently. These include languages closely related to Hindi, such as Awadhi and Marwari, and French Creole languages, like Seychellois Creole and Mauritian Creole.
These additions cover over 614 million speakers, opening up translation for approximately 8% of the world’s population.
This marks Google’s most significant expansion for African languages, with a quarter of the current additions coming from Africa.
Some are major global languages spoken by over 100 million people. Others are spoken by small communities of indigenous populations, with a few having virtually no native speakers but active revitalization efforts.
Google aims to support more language types and dialectal variations over time. The broader goal is to build AI models supporting over 1,000 spoken languages worldwide.
