In an article on its official blog, Google announced that it has expanded the number of languages supported by Google translator (its famous online translation service), adding 110 of them, including some Italian dialects, including LombardThe VenetianThe FriulianThe Ligurian and the Sicilian. There is currently no support for voice pronunciation of translations in these languages, and it is not certain that this feature will be very accurate. The addition of so many new languages has been made possible by artificial intelligence and, in particular, by PaLM 2 language model.
Google Translate’s new features are the product of AI
The last update in this regard dates back to 2022, when Google added support for “only” (so to speak) 24 languages. Adding as many as 110 new languages in one fell swoop would not have been possible without a clever use of artificial intelligence and, in particular, of PaLM 2 widthwhich once powered the Google Bard chatbot (now replaced by Google Gemini).
Regarding the latter, Isaac Caswellsenior software engineer at Google Translate, reported:
PaLM 2 has been a critical piece of the puzzle, helping Translate learn closely related languages more efficiently, including languages close to Hindi, such as Awadhi and Marwadi, and French Creoles such as Seychelles Creole and Mauritian Creole. As technology has advanced and we have continued to collaborate with expert linguists and native speakers, over time We will support even more language varieties and spelling conventions.
Casweel expressed some satisfaction with the addition of the new languages, which cover over half a billion speakers, and said:
From Cantonese to Qeqchi, these new languages represent more than 614 million speakers, opening the doors to translation for about 8% of the world’s population. Some are major world languages with over 100 million speakers. Others are spoken by small indigenous communities and some have almost no native speakers but active revitalization efforts are underway. About a quarter of new languages come from Africarepresenting our greatest expansion of African languages to date, including Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Ga, Swati, Venda and Wolof.
How to set one of the supported dialects on Google Translate
Setting up one of the new and added dialects on Google Translate is quite simple, as you just need to follow the same steps you follow when using the translation service: access the main page of Google Translate (or its mobile app), type the word or phrase to translate in the appropriate box on the left and use the appropriate drop-down menus to choose the starting language (e.g. Italian) and the destination one (e.g. Sicilian, Lombard, Ligurianetc.).
