Google has added 24 new languages spoken by more than 300 million people to its Google Translate platform.
Global tech giant Google platform Google Translates adds 24 new languages to its language translation platform Google Translate bringing to a total of 133 languages on its platform.
Along with Sanskrit, the newly added 24 languages include other Indian languages Assamese, Maithili, Konkani, Mizo, Dogri, Meiteilon which is Manipuri, and Bhojpuri. Now a total 19 of Indian languages are available on the language-translation platform of the big tech giant Google.
Isaac Caswell, a senior software engineer at Google Research, said, “Sanskrit is the number one, most requested language at Google Translate, and we are finally adding it. We are also adding the first languages from northeast India, which is another rather underrepresented place.”
The company says the new languages also represent a technical milestone, explaining that they use a machine learning model which learns to “translate into another language without ever seeing an example.”
This can be useful for languages where large datasets of human translations, which can be used to train a computer, are not available.
But the company admits that the technology isn’t perfect.
So will the translations be accurate? Some polyglots have noted problems with the languages already available.
“For many supported languages, even the largest languages in Africa that we have supported – say like Yoruba, Igbo, the translation is not great. It will definitely get the idea across but often it will lose much of the subtlety of the language,” Google Translate research scientist Isaac Caswell told the BBC.
With the new languages, he said, it would be no different. But the people who helped in the research said it was a good place to start.
“In the end, we have to make the call. And my impression from other people I have talked to was that it was a very positive thing for them,” Mr Caswell said.
In 2020, Google Translate added five new languages to the platform in what was then its first expansion in the past few years.
📢 Announced at #GoogleIO: 8 new Indian languages are coming to Google Translate.
— Google India (@GoogleIndia) May 11, 2022
24 new languages have been added to Google Translate, including Assamese, Bhojpuri, Dogri, Konkani, Maithili, Meiteilon (Manipuri), Mizo and Sanskrit. pic.twitter.com/QMbHKwUwMp
