For several years now, Google Translate has helped break down language barriers, and connect communities all around the globe. Google wants to make this possible for even more people – especially those whose languages are not currently supported in most technology. As such, Google has added 24 new languages to Translate; bringing the total language count to 133.
According to Google, over 300 million people speak the newly added languages. Part and parcel of this update, indigenous languages of the Americas (Quechua, Guarani and Aymara) and an English dialect (Sierra Leonean Krio) have also been added to Translate for the first time.
New languages added to Google Translate
Here is the complete list of the new languages now available in Google Translate:
- Assamese, used by about 25 million people in Northeast India
- Aymara, used by about two million people in Bolivia, Chile and Peru
- Bambara, used by about 14 million people in Mali
- Bhojpuri, used by about 50 million people in northern India, Nepal and Fiji
- Dhivehi, used by about 300,000 people in the Maldives
- Dogri, used by about three million people in northern India
- Ewe, used by about seven million people in Ghana and Togo
- Guarani, used by about seven million people in Paraguay and Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil
- Ilocano, used by about 10 million people in northern Philippines
- Konkani, used by about two million people in Central India
- Krio, used by about four million people in Sierra Leone
- Kurdish (Sorani), used by about eight million people, mostly in Iraq
- Lingala, used by about 45 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Angola and the Republic of South Sudan
- Luganda, used by about 20 million people in Uganda and Rwanda
- Maithili, used by about 34 million people in northern India
- Meiteilon (Manipuri), used by about two million people in Northeast India
- Mizo, used by about 830,000 people in Northeast India
- 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
- Sanskrit, used by about 20,000 people in India
- 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 Eswatini, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe
- Twi, used by about 11 million people in Ghana
The first languages added using Zero-Shot Machine Translation
The introduction of these new languages also serve as a technical milestone for Google Translate. The above languages are the first languages Google has added using Zero-Shot Machine Translation; this is where a machine learning model only sees monolingual text – it learns to translate into another languages without ever seeing an example.
While Google says that this technology isn’t perfect, the company will keep improving these models to deliver the same experience that users are used to with other languages such as German and Spanish, for example.