Google has announced the addition of 110 new languages to its translation service, including Newari (NepalBhasa), the mother tongue of Nepal’s Newar community. This update, revealed in a recent blog post, significantly expands Google Translate’s linguistic capabilities.
Users can now translate various languages into Newari and vice versa. The inclusion of Newari is part of Google’s broader initiative to incorporate more diverse languages using artificial intelligence, specifically the Palm-2 language model. Other notable additions include African languages such as Fon, Swati, and Wolof, as well as Cantonese, which is spoken by over 610 million people worldwide.
Sunita Dangol, Deputy Mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City and an advocate for mother tongue preservation, expressed joy at Newari’s inclusion in Google Translate. The World Newah Organization has been collaborating with Google Translate’s engineering team since 2021 to support this project.
This development follows Google’s 2013 addition of the Nepali language to its translation service. The company aims to break down language barriers and foster global communication through continuous improvements to Google Translate. In 2022, Google introduced new languages using Zero-Shot machine translation technology, and now claims that its AI-powered approach has further enhanced translation effectiveness.
