Languages on Google Translate

Forbes' tally of Chinese billionaires and Google Translate's supported languages, climbing the same staircase. Two completely unrelated globalisation projects, both adding entries every year. The world is being translated, occasionally by people who can afford to.

Forbes' Chinese billionaires count rose from about 70 in 2010 to over 600 by 2020 as the country's tech and property booms minted fortunes. Google Translate's supported language count went from a handful to over 100 in the same period as neural-machine-translation made lower-resource languages economical to add. Two completely unrelated globalisation lines sharing a window because the same twelve years scaled both Chinese wealth concentration and infrastructure for breaking down language barriers. Different markets, same era of expansion.

Two ledgers of the global decade. Money and language, both more numerous than they used to be.