Report: Google Translate To Provide Real-Time Translation Via App

The New York Times reports, Google is planning to announce soon a major update to their Google Translate App for Android and likely iOS, that enables real-time, automated translation.

This would work a lot like the Microsoft Translate Skype real-time translation demo we saw several months ago.

The update that is expected will enable Google Translate to automatically recognize when someone is speaking a specific language and automatically turn that into written translated text for the user on the other end.

It is unclear how many languages this will work on with the update. It is reported it will work on many “popular” languages.

Google Translate currently supports hundreds of different languages but not with automated speech recognition. The NY Times said that the Google Translate app has been “installed more than 100 million times on Android phones,” many of those apps will get the automatic upgrade to the new version. “We have 500 million active users of Translate every month, across all our platforms,” said Macduff Hughes, the engineering director of Google Translate. With 80 to 90 percent of the web in just 10 languages, he added, translation becomes a critical part of learning for many people.

You can see a video of the Microsoft Skype translator in action over here.

It is unclear when the new Google Translate app will become available.

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Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on social media at @rustybrick, +BarrySchwartz and Facebook. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio and disclosures, click over here.