Meta's Omnilingual MT for 1,600 Languages

(ai.meta.com)

70 points | by j0e1 3 days ago

8 comments

  • stingraycharles 3 hours 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)

    • pseudocomposer 1 hour ago
      Kagi Translate is fantastic. Multilingual support is honestly one of the best things about LLMs, imo.
    • djsamseng 1 hour 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.

    • yellow_lead 1 hour ago
      It's not even good for Chinese
    • smallerize 2 hours ago
      *they're

      (Sorry I had to)

      • stingraycharles 2 hours ago
        I could have sworn I edited it! I did notice myself as well, but thanks for the correction.
      • tomrod 2 hours ago
        *ពួកគេគឺជា
  • djoldman 1 hour ago
    Just spent a long time trying to find where you can download any of these weights.

    Is it open weight? If so, why isn't there just a straight link to the models?

  • garyclarke27 1 hour ago
    They can translate 1600 languages, but they cannot do basic text formatting, where are the paragraphs?
  • psychoslave 3 hours 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 1 hour ago
      when you market, you use frontier and edge terms, so it sounds pro max
  • croes 2 hours 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 2 hours 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!

  • rowanseerwald 40 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • true21733 3 days ago
    [dead]
  • bikeshaving 1 hour 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-...

    • 0x3f 1 hour ago
      Do you also boycott Toyota for the Hilux?