A new effort to translate all languages could democratize the Internet, experts say.
Meta AI's New 200-Language Translation Model: NLLB200 Explained
Meta has announced a research project to create translation software that works for "everyone in the world." It's part of a growing effort to serve the roughly 20 percent of the world's population who don't speak languages supported by current translation systems.
“Communicating while speaking the same language is hard enough; trying to capture and understand the universal nuances of different languages is another story,” Scott Mann, co-CEO of Flawless AI, a neural net film lab, told Lifewire in an email interview. “Until now, the only way to translate has been for ‘human translators’ to learn multiple languages and attempt to interpret and bridge language barriers for different applications.”
Meta plans a long-term effort to build language and MT tools that cover most of the world’s languages. The company is building a new advanced AI model called No Language Left Behind. The company says it will learn from languages with fewer examples to train on and use it to power expert-quality translations in hundreds of languages, ranging from Asturian to Luganda to Urdu.
