Super AI Computer To Translate 55 African Languages Across Facebook, Instagram, And Other Meta Apps

Last week Meta announced No Language Left Behind (NLLB), a first-of-its-kind AI breakthrough project. The project leverages models capable of delivering evaluated, high-quality translations directly between 200 languages—including low-resource languages like Asturian, Luganda, Urdu, and more. This plan will allow people to access and share web content in their native language and communicate with anyone, regardless of their language preferences.

Currently, about 4 billion people are locked out of internet services because their languages are marginalized, and they do not speak one of the few languages content is available. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 13.5% of the global population but less than 1% of global research output, mainly due to language barriers.

Meta plans to change that with an AI supercomputer that will help "enable more than 25 billion translations every day" across Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta apps. About 55 African languages will be included in the model, as well as 145 languages not currently supported by translation systems.

"As we build for the metaverse, integrating real-time AR/VR text translation in hundreds of languages is a priority. At Meta, the aim is to set a new standard of inclusion—where someday, everyone can have access to virtual-world content, devices, and experiences, with the ability to communicate with anyone in any language in the metaverse. And, over time, bring people together globally," says Meta.

"Translation is one of the most exciting areas in AI because of its impact on people's everyday lives. NLLB is about much more than just giving people better access to content on the web, and it will make it easier for people to contribute and share information across languages."

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg published on his Facebook profile that his company will use a supercomputer to lead the translations through advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities.

"We also work with professional translators to conduct human evaluation, meaning people who speak the languages natively evaluate what the AI produced. The reality is that a handful of languages dominate the web, so only a fraction of the world can access content and contribute to the web in their language. We want to change this," he explains.