Facebook’s parent company Meta is pushing the boundaries of AI technology and breaking down Language barriers like never before. Meta’s new AI translation model — No-Language-Left-Behind 200 (NLLB-200) — has broken a translation milestone.
This single model can translate 200 different languages with detail and accuracy — a feat no other AI translation model has accomplished. NLLB-200 has significant implications for AI, translation, and the future of the internet.
Meta’s new NLLB-200 AI model is the first of its kind to translate between 200 languages in a single model effectively. In the past, various models were typically necessary for different languages.
The company also included numerous languages that were either nonexistent in these algorithms or had poor translations due to limited training data. This helps make technology much more accessible to many people.
They prioritized inclusion for NLLB-200 and made it a point to create accurate and detailed translations for historically excluded or poorly translated languages. These frequently lacked good AI translation options due to a lack of text, data, and resources for the language like books and media.
“Low-resource” languages are more challenging to create translation models for because the AI has less data to learn from. Meta was able to overcome this challenge — they even went so far as to seek out native speakers of obscure languages when adequate resources were unavailable.
Meta will be open-sourcing the massive dataset it used to train NLLB-200 so more translation algorithms can be inclusive and accurate. They will use the model on their applications and websites — as well as Metaverse apps and experiential and educational media.
Meta’s NLLB-200 translation algorithm is more than just another AI translator. This model is a groundbreaking step forward for AI and communication.
For one thing, NLLB-200 will help expand communication capabilities to people worldwide, regardless of what language they speak. Even in an era where space travel and virtual reality are commonly used technologies, basic communication capabilities remain out of reach for billions of people. In the U.S.
