Google is beefing up Google Translate by adding support for 110 new languages. Google claims to have achieved this biggest update yet with the PaLM 2 AI language model. You can say that Google is riding the AI wave properly. Before June 2024, Translate supported 133 languages through its service and official app for Android and iOS.
Cantonese is ranked at the top among the new languages as one of the most demanded but difficult to process since it overlaps with Mandarin in writing. So, the data to train the AI was difficult to find, so it took a while, claims Google.
Besides that, Google trained the PaLM 2 AI to learn many African languages, which comprise 25% of the new languages added. Millions use these languages to hundreds of millions of people. The similarity of the new languages with the popular languages helped the AI to translate them easily. For example, Awadhi and Marwadi are close to Hindi.
Google claims to partner with native speakers and expert linguists. However, it is unclear whether such individuals helped maintain the accuracy of these new languages trained by the AI. The translate feature can help users understand the common text in the website’s elements and most common phrases. However, you need to avoid relying on it to translate medical instructions.
UCLA Medical Center’s 2021 study on Google Translate found that it wasn’t reliable for people who don’t speak English to understand medication instructions. Though it might work with the most common languages, like Spanish or Mexican, it would be tricky with lesser-spoken ones. That said, you always need to take the Translate results with some flexibility of marginal error. Even linguist students can figure out misconstrued translations of popular languages can be fatal or gravely embarrassing.
Otherwise, Google Translate would work well in everyday practical scenarios. That means you can get by through the day using Translate for basic communications and translations. Despite its occasional hiccups, you can still understand the overall context of the text. However, we’d still recommend relying on expert linguists and certified human translators for professional translation activities like grammar and syntax, local expressions, slang, and sarcasm.
Following Google’s suite, Microsoft Translator and Amazon Translate are the two big options next to it. Meanwhile, Apple Translate has a lot of catching up to do.
