Meta New AI Model Translates 55 African Languages

Meta, the giant tech company, formerly known as Facebook, has built a new AI model that translates 55 African languages, making technology accessible to more Africans.

On Wednesday, Meta announced that it has built and open-sourced ‘No Language Left Behind’ (NLLB)-200, a single AI model, which can translate across 200 different languages, including 55 African languages. The new model can improve the quality of translations by an average of 44 per cent. The 200-language model has over 50 billion parameters. 

Reportedly, Meta has used the modelling techniques to extend translations on Facebook, Instagram, and Wikipedia. The company has worked with professional translators for each of these languages to develop a reliable translation for many low-resource languages.

Related Posts

Why did Meta build the new AI model?

The giant tech company built the new AI model to create more inclusive machine translation systems. Meta wanted to focus on those people around the world who are currently excluded from the web because they do not speak one of the common languages. 

With the new AI model, Meta wanted to expand web access to more regions. Reportedly, for some African and Indian-based languages, NLLB-200’s translations were more than 70 per cent accurate.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on his Facebook profile, “It’s impressive how much AI is improving all of our services. We just open-sourced an AI model we built that can translate across 200 different languages.”

People in the African continent speak several languages. While speaking about the launch of the AI model, Balkissa Ide Siddo, Public Policy Director for Africa, said, “Africa is a continent with very high linguistic diversity, and language barriers exist day to day. We are pleased to announce that 55 African languages will be included in this machine translation research.”

fatima

Recent Posts

Canada Boosts $37B Mining Investment in Africa with New Strategy

Canadian companies have expanded their presence as major African mining stakeholders and invested more than $37 billion. Africa holds the…

March 20, 2025

South Africa to Plant 1 Million Trees in a Single Day

The South African government wants people to plant one million trees across the nation within a single day on September…

March 20, 2025

South Africa’s Inflation Holds Steady as Central Bank Decision Looms

The government's statistics regulator showed that South African inflation stayed at 3.2% during February and rose below the projected 3.3%.…

March 19, 2025

Africa’s Energy Future Takes Center Stage at AEW 2025

Keywords: Cape Town, African Energy Chamber, Africa,  The 2025 African Energy Week (AEW) will host the top energy leaders from…

March 19, 2025

Africa’s Green Hydrogen Revolution: A Path to Energy Independence

Recent research shows that Professor Abdessamad Faik believes Africa is at an important energy choice point as renewable-powered hydrogen allows…

March 18, 2025

US Threatens to Close Johannesburg Consulate Over Street Renaming

The United States plans to shut down its Johannesburg consulate after Sandton Drive gets renamed to Leila Khaled Drive even…

March 18, 2025