As handy as Google’s crazy popular translation tool has always been, there was something missing that could make all our lives even easier. We’re talking about a real-time transcription feature, which is now a thing on Android devices.
This does a great deal more than simply turn speech into text on your mobile phone, also translating said text while a person is still speaking without requiring a lot of effort on your part. All you need is the latest version of the official Google Translate app from the search giant’s Play Store, with a dedicated “Transcribe” icon found on the home screen and the option to select your source and target languages located in the language dropdown at the top.
For the time being, the groundbreaking AI-powered functionality is compatible with English, French, German, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Thai, supporting transcriptions in any combination of these languages while Google continues to work on expanding the list in the near future. The company also plans to enrich the Google Translate experience for iPhones and iPads at some point, although no iOS release schedule has been put together just yet.
In the meantime, Android users should definitely take this feature for a spin once they receive the newest update for their Google Translate app. An internet connection is required for real-time transcriptions to work, allowing you to follow a lecture, for instance, without understanding the language that’s actually being spoken.
Although you can’t upload an audio file and have Google Translate automatically and seamlessly transcribe it for you just yet, the extremely cool new feature does support pre-recorded audio, which you can play on your computer, as well as live audio sources.
You can also easily pause and restart your transcriptions by tapping on the mic icon, as well as check out the original transcript before it’s translated, change the text size, and choose the newly released dark theme in the settings menu. In a nutshell, Google appears to have thought of pretty much everything right off the bat here.