Google Translate's Africa reach expands

Google announced the addition of 24 languages to its Google Translate product last week, bringing the total number to 133. It significantly broadens the representation of African languages, as can be seen in the below info graph.

The announcement was made with a mixture of fanfare and caveat, largely focused on the technology - “a technical milestone” because of the use of the “Zero-Shot Machine Translation” but one that “isn’t perfect” i.e. the expectation is that the quality of translations will improve over time.

The cultural, commercial and business implications might be underplayed. As stated by Franz Fanon, “to speak a language is to take on a world, a culture”. And influence can flow in both directions. In the current UK music charts, the song ‘Peru’ by the Nigerian artist Fireboy DML is at number six singing in Yoruba “Mo'n k'orin fun won, wan jo si” or per Google Translate “I sing to them, they dance”.

It’s a task that becomes easier with these additional tools.

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