Google translate adds 24 new languages, including Sepedi and Tsonga

Search Engine giant Google says it has added 24 new languages to Google Translate including two South African official languages, Sepedi and Tsonga.

The newly added languages bring the total number of languages on Google Translate to 133 allowing millions of users to break language barriers and ease communication.

There are now seven South African languages on Google translate, including Sepedi and Tsonga.

The announcement was made by Google Senior Software Engineer Isaac Caswell on Wednesday, saying that over 300 million people speak these newly added languages.

“It like Mizo, used by around 800,000 people in the far northeast of India, and Lingala, used by over 45 million people across Central Africa,” said Caswell.

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This update includes America’s indigenous languages (Quechua, Guarani and Aymara) and an English dialect (Sierra Leonean Krio).

Google said about seven million people in eSwatini, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe speak Tsonga while about 14 Million speak Sepedi in South Africa.

“This is also a technical milestone for Google Translate. These are the first languages we’ve added using Zero-Shot Machine Translation, where a machine learning model only sees monolingual text,” said Caswell.

Google Translate technicians said it was grateful for the native speakers, professors and linguists who worked with them for the latest update.

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