Google launched Google Translate in 2006. Since then, the company has slowly and steadily added support for more languages to the platform. Last month, the company added support for 24 new languages, 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 will receive its “biggest expansion everThe 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 edge among the top three players.
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Google Translate now supports 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 newly added 110 languages “represent more than 614 million speakers, allowing translations for around 8% of the world’s population.”
Google further added that “Some are major world languages with more than 100 million speakers. Others are spoken by small communities of indigenous people, and some have almost no native speakers but active revitalization efforts.”
A quarter of the 110 languages are from Africa, including Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Ga, Swati, Venda and Wolof, making this the largest expansion of African languages on Google Translate to date.
