Reddit Deploys AI-Assisted Translations in 35 Countries

Reducing language barriers with AI
Reddit, one of the internet’s biggest discussion websites, is making huge strides to eliminate language barriers across the web. Today, the company announced a big new feature: Users will be able to automatically translate text next to comments published in a foreign language. The translation feature was first released in France last year and is now expanding to Brazil and Spain.

How does it work?
This machine learning powered feature is easy to use: On Reddit, users just have to click a « translate » icon that appears in the site’s drop-down menu. Then they can translate their news feed and comments in two languages — Portuguese and Spanish.
But wait, there’s more! Users can post and comment in their language and it will get automatically self-translated to the community-defined language (unlike ‘translating’ every Instagram post you see, come on…).

Extension of the translation function
In the following weeks, we will also be rolling out our translation feature to Germany, Italy, the Philippines and Latin American countries. We will have a banner announcing that a post has been translated as well as a quick button to see the original content – handy if for example there is one sentence poorly translated.
AI translation at the service of search engines