Universal translators are tantalizing close as Facebook's Meta reveals its tech can translate between 101 languages

Back in August 2023, Meta revealed an ‘all-in-one’ AI translation model capable of understanding close to 100 different languages.

Dubbed SeamlessM4T (Massively Multilingual and Multimodal Machine Translation), this is Meta’s attempt at creating a ‘universal translator’ akin to the Babel Fish in Douglas Adams’ classic sci-fi series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The team behind the SeamlessM4T tool has now detailed its work in a piece in the journal Nature, revealing the advanced system delivers an all-in-one solution for text-to-text, speech-to-text, speech-to-speech, and text-to-speech translations across an impressive, and growing, array of languages.

Over 400 years of raw audio

SeamlessM4T, which, among other things, is being used to automatically dub videos on Facebook and Instagram, currently supports speech-to-speech translation from 101 to 36 languages, speech-to-text translation for from 101 to 96 languages, text-to-text translation for 96 languages, text-to-speech translation from 96 to 36 languages, and automatic speech ...