Google Translate adds support for 110 languages, representing 614 million speakers

Google said today it is adding support for 110 languages ​​to its translation service. The company has used its PaLM 2 AI model to enable translations.

These languages ​​include Afar, Cantonese, Manx, Nko, Punjabi (Shahmukhi), Tamazight (Amazigh) and Tok Pisin. The company said the newly added languages ​​represent more than 614 million speakers, or about 8% of the world’s population.

Google noted that these languages ​​are in different stages of use. While some of them have 100 million speakers, some don’t have a single active speaker – but people are working to preserve those languages.

Google said it is taking into account elements like regional variants, dialects and different spelling standards while adding language support.

“Our approach has been to prioritize the most commonly used variants of each language. Romani, for example, is a language that has many dialects throughout Europe. Our models produce text that is closest to Southern Vlax Romani, a commonly used variant online. But it also combines elements from others, such as Northern Vlax and Balkan Romani,” said Issac Caswell, a software engineer at Google, in a statement.

The addition of 110 languages ​​to Google Translate is part of the initiative to support this 1,000 languages ​​via AI, which was announced in 2022. The same year, the company added support for 24 languages ​​spoken by more than 300 million people through its one-shot model. With the latest additions, Google Translate now supports 243 languages.

At WWDC, Apple announced it was adding Hindi support to its translation app. However, compared to Google, Apple Translate supports just over 20 languages.