Google Translate has announced the addition of Inuktut, the language spoken by over 39,000 Inuit in Canada, marking a significant milestone as the platform’s first Canadian Indigenous language.
Inuktut is known for its complexity, making accurate translation pretty hard. Google worked closely with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), an Inuit advocacy organization, to ensure the translation quality and provide support for the two writing systems, Qaniujaaqpait (syllabics) and Qaliujaaqpait (Roman alphabet).
Working with ITK, Google also created a tool based on the Inuktut Qaliujaaqpait Converter to allow translations in both writing systems.
“As the national representational organization for Inuit in Canada, we strive to revitalize, protect and promote Inuktut. We welcome Google’s work to include Inuktut in its roster of languages on Google Translate. The addition of Inuktut on such a widely used platform empowers Inuit to interact more fully in the digital world,” said Natan Obed, President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, in a statement to iPhone in Canada.
While Google says early translation models are still improving, but they hope for ongoing feedback from Inuktut speakers and linguists to tweak the tool over time.
Google says its PaLM 2 large language model and other tech advances have allowed it to support hundreds of news languages for Google Translate, including Inuktut.
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