Conversation Mode for Google Translate App Gets More Useful

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 19 Oct 2011

Google Translate is the online service that allows you to translate text and even entire websites from one language to another. The Google Translate app for Android brings the Google Translate functionality to your Android-powered mobile device. That would be the brief introduction to make sure that everyone is on board.

The news is that Google Translate’s Conversation Mode, a feature introduced earlier this year, has gotten a bit more useful. When Conversation Mode was released, earlier this year as I already mentioned, it provided support for just two languages, mainly English and Spanish. With support for so few languages, Conversation Mode wasn’t exactly very useful.

So how did Conversation Mode become more useful? The answer is simple: the development team behind the Google Translate app added support for 12 more languages. This means that Conversation Mode in Google Translate for Android provides support for 14 languages now. The following languages: English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian and Turkish.

With support for more languages, Conversation Mode is certainly a lot more useful now. Which brings up this simple question: how does Conversation Mode work? Here’s a brief and to the point explanation: you speak into your Android-device, the app translates what you said, and it reads the translation out loud. When the person you speak to responds, the app listens and translates what that person said and reads it back to you. Check out the video down at the bottom of this article to see how Conversation Mode works.

Please note that Conversation Mode in Google Translate for Android is still in its infancy. “This technology is still in alpha, so factors like background noise and regional accents may affect accuracy,” said Product Manager Jeff Chin. “But since it depends on examples to learn, the quality will improve as people use it more. We wanted to get this early version out to help start the conversation no matter where you are in the world.”

If you would like to get Google Translate for Android and put Conversation Mode to the test, get the app from the Android Market here.




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