Meta and UNESCO Partner to Enhance Translation AI

Meta is partnering with UNESCO to enhance artificial intelligence translation capabilities, aiming to boost machine understanding of languages and ease communication across global cultures.

An Alliance to Enhance AI Translation

Meta, a global leader in information technology, has partnered with UNESCO on a bold mission to enhance AI-driven translation and voice recognition systems, reports Techcrunch. Under the Language Technology Partner Program, Meta seeks collaborators willing to contribute at least 10 hours of voice recordings with transcriptions, large written texts (over 200 sentences), and sets of translated sentences.

Focus on Underrepresented Languages

The initiative particularly targets “underrepresented” languages, supporting UNESCO’s efforts. Meta and UNESCO have already secured support from the government of Nunavut, a northern Canadian territory, aiming to develop translation systems for the Inuit languages Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun spoken there.

BOUQuET: Meta’s New Benchmark Tool

Complementing this initiative, Meta introduces an open-source benchmark called BOUQuET to assess AI translation model performance, featuring phrases “meticulously crafted by linguistic experts.” Contributions are welcomed on a dedicated website.

Meta’s Growing Involvement in AI Translation

Meta has increasingly focused on AI translation for both text and speech, a natural progression for a company connecting global users. It recently unveiled a tool that uses AI to automatically dub videos into different languages with lip-sync, initially targeting select English and Spanish creator videos in the U.S. Additionally, the company has been expanding its Meta AI assistant globally, now available in 43 countries and over a dozen languages.