Meta's Omnilingual MT for 1,600 Languages

(ai.meta.com)

58 points | by j0e1 3 days ago

5 comments

  • stingraycharles 1 hour ago
    I find that meta’s translations are very poor compared to others, at least for relatively obscure languages, which I figured was relevant considering the article.

    Google Translate is a good default, but LLMs are really good at translations, as they’re better capable at understanding context and providing culturally appropriate translations.

    (I live in Cambodia where they speak Khmer)

    • yellow_lead 0 minutes ago
      It's not even good for Chinese
    • pseudocomposer 19 minutes ago
      Kagi Translate is fantastic. Multilingual support is honestly one of the best things about LLMs, imo.
    • djsamseng 30 minutes ago
      Hello from Siem Reap, Cambodia! Awesome to see a fellow tech enthusiast from Cambodia.

      I actually found Facebook’s translations pretty good (better than Google Translate for things longer than a sentence). From my understanding of Khmer, Khmer is a bit more verbose and context dependent, hence LLMs in Khmer would be a big help understand those nuances.

      In the inverse case (LLMs generating khmer from English) I heard from locals that it sounds formal and “robotic” which I found quite interesting.

    • smallerize 1 hour ago
      *they're

      (Sorry I had to)

      • stingraycharles 1 hour ago
        I could have sworn I edited it! I did notice myself as well, but thanks for the correction.
      • tomrod 1 hour ago
        *ពួកគេគឺជា
  • bikeshaving 2 minutes ago
    I’m very wary of celebrating Meta’s language work when the company was credibly found to have contributed to the genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar, and separately, to human rights abuses against Tigrayans during the conflict in northern Ethiopia. Be careful whose sins you’re laundering.

    https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/02/meta-new-poli... https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/meta-failure-...

  • psychoslave 1 hour ago
    That's a high count, but still a bit away from "Omni". Usual count is between 4k and 8k depending the source. But the first 1k might be the hardest, certainly.
    • simultsop 13 minutes ago
      when you market, you use frontier and edge terms, so it sounds pro max
  • croes 1 hour ago
    Off topic, since the AI craze MS‘ documentation translation has ridiculous errors like translating try catch keywords to "versuchen" and "fangen" for German pages
    • Tarq0n 1 hour ago
      Yes their translations offer negative value, which is annoying because at work you can't usually choose your locale settings.

      And the errors are really basic, like translating shortly to short, not the same thing at all!

  • true21733 3 days ago
    [dead]