New York — If you are an Android users and a fan of Google services, chances are you have at least fiddled with Google Translate, now speakers of English and Spanish can now speak with each other through the engagement of Google Translate. The search engine giant Google on Wednesday began transforming Android-powered smartphones into interpreters with experimental software that lets the handsets translate conversations in real time.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine giant leader’s passion to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible is slowly but surely coming to fruition, most notably the language barrier. But the company’s ongoing investment in translation technology is making it easier to bypass linguistic walls.
This week, Google made the announcement on its blog, “When we unwrapped the first version of Google Translate for Android in January 2010, we were excited about the year ahead. For the first time, we were bringing the capabilities supported on Google Translate — like machine translation, romanization of non-Roman scripts and spoken translations — to the Android platform.
The company announced several new features and enhancements to Google Translate app for Android that will empower users to speak words and phrases via natural language and have them translated instantly, allowing the Android device to essentially “mediate” a conversation between two individuals speaking different languages (currently only available for English and Spanish), including the ability to archive conversations.
For instance, it translates voice-dictated sentences and text messages instantly into and out of foreign languages, enabling users speaking different languages to communicate via SMS.
The newly released features are pretty valuable, especially for interpretation of signs and menus in foreign countries, and guessing how to ask where the restroom is while traveling — at least, in a way that is more elegant than crossing your legs and hopping around and hoping someone will take pity on you!
“Today, we are revamping Translate for Android with various reinforcements to make the app easier to interact with. Among other improvements, we have created better dropdown boxes to help select the languages you want to translate from and into, an improved input box, and cleaner icons and layout.”
The most noteworthy feature of all, of course, is the “Conversation Mode” that offers speech translation in real-time. This means that you can talk to people in other languages extremely easily, without the arduous task of typing it in. Two people can speak to the same device in different languages and the app will continuously read out translations in the respective languages.
“In conversation mode, simply press the microphone for your language and start speaking,” product manager Awaneesh Verma said in a blog post.
“Google Translate will translate your speech and read the translation out loud. Your conversation partner can then respond in their language, and you will hear the translation spoken back to you.”
Google posted an early demo of the process a few months ago when it was just a prototype. Conversation Mode currently translates between English and Spanish for now, and factors such as regional dialects, background noise, or fast talking could vex translations, Verma warned. Though knowing Google, more languages — a lot more — are under the wraps. Google acknowledged the process may still be a little buggy while they perfect it.
“Even with these caveats, we are excited about the future promise of this technology to be able to help people connect across languages,” Verma said.
“As Android devices have spread across the globe, we have seen Translate for Android used all over.”
The majority of people using Translate are outside the United States, with daily use of the feature taking place in more than 150 countries, according to the Google product manager.
Translate supports 53 languages in text and Android devices handle voice recognition in 15 languages, Verma said.
Nevertheless, a true universal translator will remain the stuff of science fiction for years to come, but Google is offering the next best thing here and now.