Google Translate expands access with 110 new languages

Google Translate has significantly expanded its reach, adding 110 new languages and accessing over 614 million additional speakers in its "largest expansion ever."

The company credits its PaLM 3 large language model (LLM) for making this possible. According to Google, "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."

This update will "open up translations for around 8% of the world’s population." Notably, about a quarter of the newly added languages are African, marking Google’s largest African language expansion yet.

The new additions include major world languages with over 100 million speakers, languages spoken by small indigenous communities, and a few languages with almost no native speakers but active revitalization efforts.

Spoken languages on Google Translate

Some of the newly added languages include:

1. Cantonese: In high demand due to its frequent overlap with Mandarin in writing.
2. Manx: A Celtic language spoken on the Isle of Man. It nearly went extinct but has been revived, now boasting a few thousand speakers.
3. Afar: A tonal language spoken in Djibouti, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, with significant volunteer community contributions.
4. NKo: A standardised form of the West African Manding languages that unifies many dialects into a common language.
5. Punjabi Shahmukhi: A version of Punjabi written using the Perso-Arabic script, commonly spoken in Pakistan.

This expansion underscores Google’s commitment to making its translation services more inclusive and accessible to diverse linguistic communities worldwide.