In its latest attempt to improve Translate, Google aims to curb gender bias by providing feminine and masculine translations for some gender-neutral words on the Google Translate website. Google Translate learns from hundreds of millions of already-translated examples from the web.
Historically, it has provided only one translation for a query, even if the translation could have either a feminine or masculine form. However, you will now 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.
In the future, Google plans to extend gender-specific translations to more languages, launch on other Translate platforms like iOS and Android apps, and address gender bias in features like query auto-complete. Google also mentioned that it is thinking on how to address non-binary gender in translations.