Meta AI creates speech-to-speech translator that works in dozens of languages

The tech giant Meta, which runs Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, has unveiled a machine-learning system that can translate speech in 101 languages into words spoken by a voice synthesiser in any of 36 target languages. Trained on around half-a-million hours of audio matched with the corresponding text, the system translates speech to speech in only a few seconds without the need to translate it into text first. Meta researchers say they fine-tuned the system to limit the occurrence of gender bias and ‘added toxicity’, cases where a translation includes offensive terms that don’t reflect the original language.