Google Translate has added five more new languages to its service today, bring the total to 108 languages. This is the first time in four years, it has added new languages to its artificial intelligence-powered translation, the Verge reported.

Among the new languages are -- Kinyarwanda, Odia, Tatar, Turkmen, and Uyghur. According to the tech giant, the collective speaking population of all five combined is about 75 million people around the globe.

Google Translate could not support the language earlier as the online repository of these languages, which were to be used to train the machine learning models, were scarcely available. Another issue was to find human community members to refine the models, as per the Verge report.

According to Google’s spokesperson cited in the Verge report, Google Translate learns from existing translations found on the web, and when languages don’t have an abundance of web content, it’s been difficult for the system to support them effectively. He added that it was made possible after the recent advances in Google’s machine learning technology, and active involvement of the Google Translate Community members, according to Verge report.

Translate will support both text translation and website translation for the five new languages and virtual keyboard input for three of them — Kinyarwanda, Tatar, and Uyghur. However, the addition of the Uyghur language holds geopolitical significance. The language is spoken by around 12 million people predominantly living in the autonomous Xinjiang region of northwest China.

Over the last few years, the Chinese government has waged a campaign against the Muslim minority group under the garb of reeducation camps. Leaked documents detail for the first time China's systematic brainwashing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in a network of high-security prison camps, BBC reported.

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