Google translate now has Konkani in its language bank! It is the local language of Goa, India. This is a proud moment for Konkani speakers everywhere. 23 other languages have been added too as Google wants to include languages that aren’t really represented in technology around the world.
Other Indian languages to be added are Bhojpuri, Dogri, Assamese, Maithili, Sanskrit, and Manipuri. Out of these languages, Konkani and Manipuri have the least number of speakers. Konkani is used by 2 million people in central India.
These languages were translated using ‘zero-shot machine translation’. This means that the machine sees monolingual text and learns to translate it into another language without seeing any example. This method has been used for the first time and is quite remarkable but not perfect. Google said that they’ll keep working on improving these models.
Those who speak Konkani can help improve the translations on Google Translate.
For us at Planet-Goa, our team is driven by that feeling of exhilaration that one gets when discovering that something ‘unique’ and ‘new’ about Goa for our ever-so-discerning readers.
