
The move comes amid criticism that Google Translate often defaulted to masculine names when it converted text to another language.
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"Over the course of this year, there's been an effort across Google to promote fairness and reduce bias in machine learning," product manager James Kuczmarski said in a blog post.
Up to now, the translate program provided only one translation for a query, often choosing the masculine word for terms like "doctor," and the feminine word for "nurse," for example.
"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," he said.
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Google said it was planning to extend gender-specific translations to more languages, "and address gender bias in features like query auto-complete."
"And we're already thinking about how to address non-binary gender in translations, though it's not part of this initial launch," Kuczmarski added.
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