Meta come back to amaze us. Just yesterday, in fact, the company announced the “first voice translation system based on Artificial Intelligence for an unwritten language”. Developed as part of the Universal Speech Translator (UST) project, AI has already successfully translated the lingua taiwanese Hookien, an unwritten language spoken throughout Taiwan. Let’s go and find out more about Meta’s AI project.
Meta: AI is able to translate unwritten languages
“The translation system is the first milestone for Meta’s AI Universal Speech Translator project, which focuses on the development of Artificial Intelligence systems that provide real-time voice translation in all languages, even those that are exclusively spoken” . So the company said in a recent note. On the other hand, most of the previous efforts made on Artificial Intelligence for language translation have focused on the written language. Therefore, Zuckerberg’s company has set itself the goal of translating languages as well lacking a formal writing system.
According to the company, there are in the world more than 7000 living languages, but “over 40% are mainly oral and do not have a standard or widely known writing system, such as Hokkien”. But Meta’s AI seems to be the ideal tool for this. In a video ad posted on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg said Meta would make the new Artificial Intelligence system available to allow people to translate multiple languages. Even those that don’t have a written form, yes.