Meta and UNESCO team up to improve translation AI
Meta has partnered with UNESCO on a new plan to enhance translation and speech recognition AI. According to Techcrunch, Meta is seeking collaborators for its Language Technology Partner Program to contribute speech recordings, transcriptions, and translated sentences in efforts to focus on underserved languages.
Collaboration with UNESCO
The collaboration has already enlisted the government of Nunavut, a Canadian territory, to develop translation systems for the Inuit languages—Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun. Meta expressed its commitment to supporting UNESCO’s efforts as part of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
The BOUQuET Translation Benchmark
Meta is also launching BOUQuET, an open-source translation benchmark to evaluate AI model performance in translation tasks. The benchmark consists of sentences curated by linguistic experts and welcomes contributions on a dedicated platform.
AI Translation Innovations
Meta's focus on AI translation extends to both text and speech applications. The company showcased a tool last year that utilizes AI for dubbing Reels into multiple languages, with lip-sync functionality. This innovation initially targets English and Spanish videos in the US and aligns with Meta's global user connectivity efforts. Additionally, Meta's AI assistant has expanded to 43 countries and supports over a dozen languages, underlining the company's commitment to enhancing cross-cultural communication.
