Metahas taken another step towards creating a universal language translator.
The company has open-sourced anAImodel that translates over 200 languages many of which arent supported by existing systems.
The research is part of a Meta initiative launched earlier this year.
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Metas new model was designed to overcome this challenge.
To do this, the researchers first interviewed speakers of underserved languages to understand their needs.
They then developed a novel data mining technique that generates training sentences forlow-resource languages.
Next, they trained their model on a mix of the mined data and human-translated data.
The result is NLLB-200 a massive multilingual translation system for 202 languages.
The team assessed the models performance on the FLORES-101 dataset, which evaluates translations of low-resource languages.
The techniques have already improved machine translations on Facebook, Instagram, and Wikipedia.
Meta has alsoopen-sourced all their benchmarks, data scripts, and modelsto support further research.
This, of course, could also benefit Meta.
Open-sourced for all
Zuckerbergs relentless drive for growth has recently run into obstacles.
In February, Facebooklost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history.
Inevitably, the company anticipates the research playing a big role in the metaverse whereconcerns about inclusion are growing.
But it can also benefit the business existing apps.
Translation issues have long caused problems for Meta.
In 2017, Israeli policearrested a PalestinianafterFacebooktranslated a post saying good morning as attack them.
The company has also struggled to monitor misinformation and hate speechin lesser-resourced languages.
The new research could mitigate these risks and improve user experiences.
To Metas credit, the company has also given rivals a chance to benefit from the work.
Open-sourcing the models will also hopefully support speakers of languages that are underserved or under threat.
In this case, what benefits Meta could also benefit humanity.
It also brings the fantasy of a universal translator closer to reality.
Story byThomas Macaulay
Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he e(show all)Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he enjoys playing chess (badly) and the guitar (even worse).
