Google has added 110 new languages to its translator — it previously supported 133 languages in total, so this is a big progress for the service.
For training, Google specialists used the PaLM 2 AI language model, and it is noted that the process went particularly well with languages that were related to those that the translator knew before. For example, languages «close to Hindi, such as Awadhi and Marwadi, and French creoles, such as Seychellois Creole and Mauritian Creole»
The updated list of languages also includes Cantonese, which has long been one of the most coveted new languages for Google Translate». This is one of the dialects that appeared in Canton (the French name for Guangzhou) — чis defined as a separate language of the Chinese language group of the Sino-Tibetan language family and uses the traditional Chinese script (unlike Mandarin, the standardization of Cantonese is not complete, which makes it difficult to learn).
Isaac Caswell from Google in a blog post adds that «approximately a quarter of new Google Translate languages come from Africa».
Also, most of the languages that the translator now supports are spoken by at least one million people, while «several», according to Caswell, are used by hundreds of millions of people to communicate.