Google have just bolted on some extra functionality to their rather clever Google Translate app for Android, with their experimental Conversation Mode feature now supporting more languages.
To start yacking away to a Johnny Foreigner, it’s simply a case of speaking into your phone’s microphone and waiting for the Translate app to translate your words of wisdom and read out the translation in the language of your choice.
The person you’re chatting to can then reply into the phone in their own language, and Conversation Mode will translate what they said and read it back to you. Google adds:
We’ve also added some other features to make it easier to speak and read as you translate. For example, if you wanted to say “Where is the train?” but Google Translate recognizes your speech as “Where is the rain?”, you can now correct the text before you translate it. You can also add unrecognized words to your personal dictionary.
When viewing written translation results, you can tap the magnifying glass icon to view the translated text in full screen mode so you can easily show it to someone nearby, or just pinch to zoom in for a close-up view.
Multi language support
With English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian and Turkish now supported, this app could be a real boon for globe-trotting travellers.
However, Google points out that the technology is still in alpha, so factors like background noise and regional accents may affect accuracy, but the more people use it the more accurate it becomes – hence the alpha release.
Google adds that while it is striving to expand full Conversation Mode to even more languages, the Google Translate for Android still supports text translation among 63 languages, voice input in 17 of those languages, and text-to-speech in 24 of them.
You can download the Google Translate app in Android Market — it’s available for tablets and mobile phones running Android 2.2 and up
