FW: Google Mobile Blog

Subject:
Google Mobile Blog

Google Mobile Blog

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Start the conversation with Google Translate for Android
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OfficialGoogleMobileBlog/~3/ydxFy4RM57M/start-conversation-with-google.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

(Cross posted on the Official Google Blog and Google Translate Blog)

Mobile technology and the web have made it easier for people around the
world to access information and communicate with each other. But there's
still a daunting obstacle: the language barrier. We're trying to knock down
that barrier so everyone can communicate and connect more easily.

Earlier this year, we launched an update to Google Translate for Android
with an experimental feature called Conversation Mode, which enables you to
you translate speech back and forth between languages. We began with just
English and Spanish, but today we're expanding to 14 languages, adding
Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese,
Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian and Turkish.




To use Conversation Mode, speak into your phone's microphone, and the
Translate app will translate what you've said and read the translation out
loud. The person you're speaking with can then reply in their language, and
Conversation Mode will translate what they said and read it back to you.

This technology is still in alpha, so factors like background noise and
regional accents may affect accuracy. 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.

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.


Tap the magnifying glass icon to view translations full screen.

Finally, we've also optimized the app for larger screens like your Android
tablet.

While we work to expand full Conversation Mode to even more languages,
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.

Download the Google Translate app in Android Market — it's available for
tablets and mobile phones running Android 2.2 and up.