Google has added more than 110 new languages into its translation tool. Among them, there are Latin American dialects and languages such as K’iche’ and Ta Yol Mam (Guatemala and México); Nahuatl or Nahua, Mayan, and Zapotecan (Mexico); Q’eqchi' (México and Belize); and Hunsrik (Brazil).
This implementation was thanks to Mexican woman Gabriela Salas Cabrera, a native of El Salto de Caballo, municipality of Chapulhuacán, who is a programmer, data scientist, and IT and Communications teacher. In an interview, this young woman said that she was the only woman in a multidisciplinary team made up of linguists, anthropologists, and programmers.
She also said that, internationally, Google was only translating Mexican Nahuatl and Peruvian Quechua.
My work focuses on the processing of natural language, a crucial technology for automatic translations. I had the opportunity to give a talk in Google and from there, we had this idea to work together in this project. I specialized in data and artificial intelligence to support indigenous languages.
Gabriela highlighted that the goal of her work at Google is "to protect the indigenous languages of Mexico using artificial intelligence,". She is also working in more tech that will help to preserve all 248 indigenous languages, as only 78 of these survive.
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