Sharjah24 – Reuters: Kampala resident Hussain Bharmal, who grew up in Uganda's capital city but is originally from India, long struggled to find resources to study the languages he hears on street corners.
Bharmal has fought a lifelong battle to understand Luganda, Uganda's official language, that, despite being spoken by millions across the east African country, is not taught in schools.
But as of this year, the aspiring polyglot can now copy-paste learning materials into Google's translation service a read them directly in Luganda.
Google's new feature is part of a push to widen representation and reduce bias in artificial intelligence systems.
Translation and language-learning giants like Google and DuoLingo have joined nonprofit-led efforts to expand language databases available online.
Luganda was one of 24 languages added to Google Translate last month spoken by around 300 million people word wide.
The new batch includes 10 sub-Saharan African languages, while the rest are mainly used in India and among indigenous groups in south America.
There are now 23 African languages on the platform, up from 13, although they still only account for 17% percent of the total.
For an optimal experience, please
