Google launched Google Translate in 2006. Since then, the company has been slowly and steadily adding support for more languages to the platform. Last month, the company added support for 24 new languages to it, bringing the total number of supported languages to 133.
However, Google has never added as many languages to Google Translate as it is doing now. Google has announced that Google Translate is getting its “largest expansion ever”. The company is adding support for 110 new languages, bringing the total number of supported languages to 243.
In comparison, Apple Translate supports 20 languages and Microsoft Translator supports 135 languages. That gives Google an upper hand among the top three players.
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Google Translate now support a total of 243 languages
According to Google, it achieved this feat with the help of the company’s PaLM 2 large language model. Some of the newly supported languages include Afar, Cantonese, Manx, NKo, Punjabi (Shahmukhi), Tamazight (Amazigh), and Tok Pisin.
Goog says the 110 newly added languages “represent more than 614 million speakers, opening up translations for around 8% of the world’s population.”
Google further added that “Some are major world languages with over 100 million speakers. Others are spoken by small communities of Indigenous people, and a few have almost no native speakers but active revitalization efforts.”
A quarter of the 110 languages come from Africa, including Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Ga, Swati, Venda, and Wolof, making this the largest expansion of African languages on Google Translate to date.
