Google is reducing gender bias in its Translation service

Gender discrimination worldwide is a major issue. It is pleasing how companies and business giants are trying their best to bring out a positive change in this aspect.

Google recently made some changes on “Google Translate” to avoid gender discrimination.

Google is working on many applications to remove gender bias towards one. Recently Google affirmed that its Google translate would now be treating both genders equally. Previously, the app was showing translation results that were inclined towards a single-gender. Some words were used as it is for all genders. This created a problem when Google generated output that showed translation for a single-gender. Google has now fixed this issue and will be showing translation for all genders without limiting to one.

For example, if you type “o bir doktor” in Turkish, you’ll now get “she is a doctor” and “he is a doctor” as the gender-specific translations.

Google announced:

“Now you’ll get both a feminine and masculine translation for a single word—like “surgeon”—when translating from English into French, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish. You’ll also get both translations when translating phrases and sentences from Turkish to English.”

Google made the point clearer that Google translate learns from the many translations that are present on the web already. When the Google model produced or showed one result leaning towards a single-gender, it led to gender biases. However, Google has now fixed it on Google translate for the above-mentioned languages. Also, Google added:

“In the future, we plan to extend gender-specific translations to more languages, launch on other Translate surfaces like our iOS and Android apps, and address gender bias in features like query auto-complete.”

Google also mentioned that it is trying to handle non- binary gender translations. Though the solution to non-binary gender translations is not a part of this launch by Google.

We are glad that Google is working to eliminate gender discrimination.  Let us know what you think in the comments section below!