Meta, announced that it has developed a non-standard Taiwanese language translation system, in a first step within the social network's giant project to develop an automatic voice translation tool that works in real time and in all languages.
"This technology allows Taiwanese-speaking people to exchange conversations with English-speaking people," the giant American group said in a statement.
The informatics program is still not completed, and at this stage it allows translating one sentence at a time, but this is "a first step towards a future in which simultaneous translation of languages will be possible," according to the company.
Taiwan is spoken by more than 30 million people in Taiwan and other Asian regions, according to the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris.
Meta explained that this language does not adopt a standardized writing system, similar to "more than 40% of the nearly seven thousand living languages" in the world.
Current AI technologies for machine translation need to analyze large amounts of written text to work well.
Meta's statement pointed out that its researchers specializing in artificial intelligence "faced many obstacles, from collecting data to developing a graphic model to evaluating" the results.
The researchers used Mandarin as an intermediate language to conduct correspondence and ensure that their system translates oral speech directly, without going through writing.
The American group intends to use its own Taiwanese translation system as part of its "Global Translator" project, and will put its information codes at the disposal of other researchers in artificial intelligence.
Meta pointed out in a statement that her Universal Speech Translator project, known as "UST", aims to "contribute to bringing down barriers and bringing people together wherever they are."