On Wednesday Google Translate introduced new improvements to its Android as well as iOS app. Google Translate is now adding a new ‘Tap to Translate’ feature exclusively for Android users. This allows users to translate from within any app. On the other hand the Offline mode feature are being received by the iOS users. The Tap to Translate feature and improved Offline Mode for iOS users will be rolling out within few days. Product Lead of Google Translate, Barak Turovsky, said in a blog post of the 500 million+ people who use Google Translate, more than 9 in 10 live outside the U.S. We’ve talked with thousands of you in India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Thailand to learn what works and what doesn’t and today ie on Wednesday we’re rolling out some big improvements.
The Tap to Translate feature on Android will offer automatic translation with the help of an icon overlay just like a Facebook Messenger chathead which pops up whenever the user copies a piece of text in a chat, comment, or text box. The Tap to Translate works not only on any Android smart phone running Jelly Bean 4.2 and above but also this Android works for all 103 languages. Google Translate is not only joining Android in using small offline packages but also adding Offline Mode to iOS. In its blog post the company said that they have shrunk the previous packages by 90% ie approximately 25 MB each as the previous packages were too big to download in the phones limited storage.
The language package can be downloaded by iOS users by just tapping the arrow which is next to the language name on the Google Translate app. After the packages are downloaded the users will be offered text translations. It does not matter whether they are online or not.
Google Translate’s “Tap to Translate” feature is not real tap to translate, because you still need to copy text to clipboard in pre-Marshmallow android, or select text in Marshmallow before you can tap to translate.
There is an app that adds real “Tap To Translate” feature to Google Translate. Go to https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vnspeak.translate for more information.