New Delhi: Google announced on Thursday that it is expanding Google Translate by adding 110 new languages. This enhancement will benefit 614 million native speakers worldwide, facilitating communication across diverse linguistic backgrounds.

According to Google, the updated service includes major global languages with over 100 million speakers, as well as languages spoken by smaller Indigenous communities. Some of these languages have very few native speakers but are actively supported through revitalization efforts.

The majority of the new languages included in Google Translate are from Africa, representing the largest expansion of African languages to date, including Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Ga, Swati, Venda and Wolof.

In 2022, Google added 24 new languages using zero-shot machine translation, where a machine learning model learns to translate into another language without ever seeing an example. 

“We announced the 1,000 languages initiative, a commitment to build AI models that will support the 1,000 most spoken languages around the world,” the company informed.

Among the new languages, Punjabi (Shahmukhi) is the variety of Punjabi written in Perso-Arabic script (Shahmukhi) and is the most spoken language in Pakistan.

“Tok Pisin is an English-based creole and the lingua franca of Papua New Guinea. If you speak English, try translating into Tok Pisin — you might be able to make out the meaning,” said Google. IANS