Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

AI is about to make Google Translate a whole lot smarter

Michael Allison
By

Google today announced updates to its Translate app for iOS, Android, and the web. The company will be bringing in additional context to translations to help you understand more about your target language, and it’ll also be using a lot more AI power for Translate to make that happen.

First, Google is using AI to add more context to transitions, as well as better translate images. The first is aimed at helping people properly grasp words that have multiple meanings.

Related Videos
Google Translate app mockup as of February 2023.
Google

Google gives the example of “novel.” This could mean a novel, something that is new, or something that is unique and original. Translate will now use AI to deliver contextual information so you can pick the right word for the occasion. Google will support this feature in English, French, German, and Spanish over the next few weeks.

Related

The second feature uses AI and machine learning (ML) to properly position translated text on an image, Currently, Google displays text in an overlay that may or may not properly display. Google says if you’re using an Android phone with over 6GB of RAM, it’ll now be able to blend the text into the image properly such that it looks more “natural”.

New features make Translate more accessible for its 1 billion users

Google is also bringing a new design to the iOS app following the rollout of the Material You redesign on Android phones. It’s not clear if Google will use the same styling or one that’s more tailored to Apple’s Human Interface Design guidelines as the company has indicated it plans to start doing. In any case, the new design will include a “redesigned Translate experience provides a larger canvas for typing and more accessible entry points for translating conversations, voice input, and Lens camera translation.” Universal to iOS and Android will be new gestures, a more readable font, and support for more languages when using on-device translation. Highlighted is support for Basque, Corsican, Hawaiian, Hmong, Kurdish, Latin, Luxembourgish, Sundanese, Yiddish, and Zulu.

Google has always used a little bit of AI through its services, but the rise of generative AI in recent times has made companies like Google (and Microsoft’s new Bing experience) substantially keener to show off just how good and helpful their AI is. The Google Translate app is a fantastic tool in the arsenal of travelers, and these updates at least sidestep the thornier issues that AI use is facing this year.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Google Lens celebrates its first anniversary with redesign, OCR update
Google Lens brings visual searches to the phone.

Google Lens has been changing the way that smartphone users make use of the camera on their device for a year now. Using deep machine learning to analyze images collected through a device's camera, the app can perform tasks like telling you about a book when you take a photo of the cover, identifying shops or locations by looking at a picture of them, or connecting to a wifi network when the camera is pointed at a label showing the login data.

In a new blog post, Google has given more details about the redesign of Google Lens that was launched last week. One major feature is the ability to search based on visual information rather than text information. So, perhaps you see a cute dog and you want to know what breed it is. With traditional text-based search, you would have to look up individuals breeds and compare images, or look for a full listing of dog breeds and hope to find the right one. With Google Lens, you can use your camera to capture an image of the dog and have Google identify the breed from that image.

Read more
Google’s ‘Touring Bird’ can make it a whole lot easier to plan a trip
google touring bird travel tool

Touring Bird: tours & activities in one place

Creating an itinerary for an upcoming trip isn't everyone's idea of fun. Google Search can help you surface ideas via local tourism websites and other offerings like Trip Advisor, but the experience can often end up feeling more like a chore than a pleasure.

Read more
Google Translate uses A.I. to improve accuracy for offline use
Using a Smartphone

Google Translate is a great tool when you don't have the language skills to take care of things, but its offline performance can be a bit ropey at times.

That's gradually changing, however, as the web giant announced an update that will enable the app to offer more accurate translations even when you're without an internet connection.

Read more