Google Translate adds 24 new languages including Bhojpuri, Assamese, Sanskrit, Maithili and many more- Technology News, Firstpost

FP StaffMay 12, 2022 13:39:06 IST

As real-time machine and app based translation becomes more commonly required, Google announced at their I/O developer’s conference that it has added 24 new languages to Google Translate. Of the new 24 additions, eight languages are from India.

Apart from improving Google Assistant’s ability to communicate with users in a more natural way and making Google Assistant more compatible with dialects, Google announced that it has made several improvements to its Google Translate service. At their ongoing Google I/O developer’s conference, The Mountain View based tech giant announced that thanks to Machine Learning, Google Translate has now ‘learnt’ 24 new languages including 8 Indian languages. These include: 

• Assamese, which is used by about 25 million people in Northeast India
• Bhojpuri, which is used by about 50 million people in northern India, Nepal and Fiji
• Dogri, which is used by about 3 million people in northern India
• Konkani, which is used by about 2 million people in Central India
• Maithili, which is used by about 34 million people in northern India
• Meiteilon or Manipuri, which is used by about 2 million people in Northeast India
• Mizo, which is used by about 830,000 people in Northeast India
• Sanskrit, which is used by about 20,000 people in India

Other than Indian languages,  Google Translate now also supports: 

• Aymara (used by about two million people across some Latin American countries)  
• Bambara (used by about 14 million people in Mali)
• Dhivehi (used by about 300,000 people in the Maldives)
• Ewe (used by about seven million people in Ghana and Togo)
• Guarani (used by about seven million people in several South American countries)
• Ilocano (used by about 10 million people in the northern Philippines)
• Krio (used by about four million people in Sierra Leone)
• Kurdish or Sorani (used by about eight million people, mostly in Iraq & parts of Turkey)
• Lingala, (used by about 45 million people in central and eastern Africa)
• Luganda (used by about 20 million people in Uganda and Rwanda)
• Oromo (used by about 37 million people in Ethiopia and Kenya)
• Quechua (used by about 10 million people in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and surrounding countries)
• Sepedi (used by about 14 million people in South Africa)
• Tigrinya (used by about eight million people in Eritrea and Ethiopia)
• Tsonga (used by about seven million people in southern Africa)
• Twi (used by about 11 million people in Ghana)

Speaking at the event, Isaac Caswell, a Google Translate Research Scientist said, “This ranges from smaller languages, like Mizo spoken by people in the northeast of India — by about 800,000 people — up to very large world languages like Lingala spoken by around 45 million people across Central Africa.”

Google attributes the improvement in speed and accuracy in their ability to add new languages to the advances in Machine Learning that have taken place over the last couple of years. “Up until a couple of years ago, it simply was not technologically possible to add languages like these, which are what we call a low resource — meaning that there are not very many text resources out there for them,” he explained. But a  new technology called Zero-Shot Machine Translation has made it easier.

With the addition of these 24 new languages, Google Translate now supports over 133 different languages. Although the new languages will not reach users all across the world just yet, it has been made live and accessible to people in North America. In a few weeks, the services will be rolled out worldwide.