San Francisco — For those who have ever craved to ask see pictures of the Kremlin in Russian or find recipes for goulash in Czech, Google now has it covered. Google Voice Search, one of the best features built into every Android phone running version 2.0 or higher, has solely been the domain of English, French and Chinese speaking users for quite a while. But today, the Internet search engine giant has announced the addition of four new languages: Russian, Polish, Czech, and Turkish to its Voice Search service.
When users on mobile phones, the service can come in handy almost at all times, and with that a lot of people who will now be able to compose text messages by simply tapping a button and talking rather than typing, since these devices sport small screens, which make the typing of words to search pretty difficult, at least when compared to typing on a desktop PC.
The Google Voice Search on mobile devices opens the possibility to search for various items on the Google through speaking the words. Now users can speak queries on Android devices in these recently announced other languages. However, bilingual users might encounter a bit of a problem; Google Voice settings only allow one language at a time, and the language preference must be changed first, Google said in a blog post.
“Try speaking queries like “концерты Юлии Савичевой” (tour dates for Yulia Svicheva), “przepis na pierogi” (recipes for pierogi), “obrázky Hradčan” (pictures of the Prague castle), or “istanbul hava durumu” (weather in Istanbul),” Amir Mané, Product Manager of Google Speech Technologies, notes in a recent post on Google Mobile Blog.
Nonetheless, Mané mentioned that one would be able to speak only one language at a time. In case users would like to speak a different language, they would have to change the applications settings first.
Carrying out Google searches via speaking is pretty easy too because unlike iOS there is an ability to add widgets to your home screen. Voice Search was originally launched in 2008 in English for the iPhone. Shortly after it was released, Google Voice was made available in Mandarin and Japanese. French, German, Italian, and Spanish were added to the app this June, with dialects specifically intended for speakers from Spain, France, Italy, and Germany. Google said last month that one out of every four searches on an Android device in the U.S. is now a voice search.
“Our aim is to bring Google Search by voice to speakers of all languages,” Google speech technologies product manager Mané wrote in June. “We will follow a meticulous process to add each new language or dialect. Working directly with native speakers in each country, we spend weeks collecting spoken utterances to create specific models which power the service.”
We are still a long ways off from coming up with the voice only controlled mobile interface, or rather one that is controlled mainly by text entry. Although Google said that some of the latest mobile phones are pre-loaded with Google’s Andoid operating system, it is also available via the Android Market. Users with iPhones and other smartphone devices can find Voice Search on http://m.google.com.
“Voice Search is often pre-loaded on many latest Android devices,” Mané noted. “In that case, all you have to do is press and hold the search button and then speak your query.”
Google also unveiled Voice Actions for phones running on the Android platform in August. It empowers users to command the phone with their voices and aids them in tasks like sending a text message, making a call, or doing a Maps search.