Matthew Field
Tue, 22 August 2023
Meta wants to build a universal translator similar to the ‘Babel Fish’ in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Laurie Sparham/Film Stills
Scientists at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta have claimed a major breakthrough in efforts to develop a universal language translator using artificial intelligence (AI).
The Facebook owner has revealed a new AI tool that can automatically translate speech from 100 languages.
The technology can transcribe all 100 languages into text form, while also translating speech into spoken English and 35 other languages.
Online translation tools have grown in popularity over the past decade.
Google’s Translate service, which launched in 2006, now supports 133 languages. The internet giant has since designed headphones that can translate dozens of languages in real time.
Smartphone companies have also developed apps that can automatically translate languages from pictures.
Meta said its new language translation technology was unique because it had been built on a single AI algorithm, rather than translating languages in stages using different systems.
The technology company compared the task of building a universal translator to creating a real-life “Babel Fish” from Douglas Adams’ novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In the book, the Babel Fish is used to translate any language in the universe.
The company said universal translation capabilities have “long been dreamed of in science fiction” but are now on the cusp of reality through AI.
However, Meta’s scientists said current efforts “only cover a small fraction of the world’s languages”.
Meta’s latest AI tool, called SeamlessM4T, will be released for free.
In May, Meta said it had developed AI that can translate speech from 1,100 languages into text – out of 7,000 known languages. To do this, it collected samples of language from the few books translated so widely, such as the Bible.
As well as translating from one language to another, Meta’s latest tool can also recognise when a speaker switches languages.
The announcement comes as Meta looks to rival OpenAI, the developer of the AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT.
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