Takeaways
- Our latest AI model, NLLB-200, can translate 200 different languages and improves the quality of translations across our technologies by an average of 44%.
- NLLB-200 makes current technologies accessible in a wider range of languages, and in the future will help make virtual experiences more accessible, as well.
Language is our lifeline to the world. But because high-quality translation tools don’t exist for hundreds of languages, billions of people today can’t access digital content or participate fully in conversations and communities online in their preferred or native languages. This is particularly an issue for hundreds of millions of people who speak the many languages of Africa and Asia.
To help people connect better today and be part of the metaverse of tomorrow, our AI researchers created No Language Left Behind (NLLB), an effort to develop high-quality machine translation capabilities for most of the world’s languages. Today, we’re announcing an important breakthrough in NLLB: We’ve built a single AI model called NLLB-200, which translates 200 different languages with results far more accurate than what previous technology could accomplish.
When comparing the quality of translations to previous AI research, NLLB-200 scored an average of 44% higher. For some African and Indian-based languages, NLLB-200’s translations were more than 70% more accurate.