Google Translate Adds Support For 7 More Indian Languages

Big tech giant Google has added seven new Indian languages to its Google Translate service. Awadhi, Bodo, Khasi, Kokborok, Marwadi, Santali, and Tulu are the new Indian languages added.

Besides, Google also rolled out support for 103 other global languages on Google Translate in what it called the “largest expansion” of the offering. With this, Google Translate now caters to 243 languages.

“From Cantonese to Qʼeqchiʼ, these new languages represent more than 614 Mn speakers, opening up translations for around 8% of the world’s population… The list includes 7 new Indian languages – Awadhi, Bodo, Khasi, Kokborok, Marwadi, Santali, and Tulu,” said Google in a blog post. 

The company said it leveraged its in-house large language model (LLM) PaLM 2 to roll out the new additions to its translation service. 

“PaLM 2 was a key piece to the puzzle, helping Translate more efficiently learn languages that are closely related to each other, including languages close to Hindi, like Awadhi and Marwadi, and French creoles like Seychellois Creole and Mauritian Creole,” Google added.

For the uninitiated, PaLM 2 is Google’s LLM that has multilingual, reasoning and coding capabilities, and is powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). However, PaLM 2 LLM is different from the Gemini Pro LLM as the latter powers the tech major’s generative AI chatbot Bard and Gemini. 

The development comes at a time when Google has ramped up its focus on GenAI and rolled out a slew of offerings for both end users and businesses. Earlier this month, the company also made some language alterations to its most prominent AI offering, Gemini.

It also rolled out a mobile app for its chatbot in India with new capabilities in English and nine Indian languages earlier this month. The app is available in Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.

That said, Google has not had a smooth tryst with GenAI experiments in India. Earlier this year, it found itself amid a controversy after its chatbot’s answers to a question about Prime Minister Narendra Modi led to an uproar. The big tech major was also pulled up by the Centre. 

In a bid to allay the fears ahead of the general elections in the country, the Alphabet-owned company announced a slew of new initiatives in March this year to help voters navigate AI-generated content.

Besides its AI initiatives, the company also recently launched Google Wallet app for Android users in India in partnership with multiple ecommerce and ticketing partners. The offering allows users to store tickets, boarding passes, loyalty or membership cards and more for easy access.