An update for Google Translate, which is now one year old, was announced Wednesday on the Google Mobile Blog, bringing with it several improvements, including the addition of a Conversation feature that AndroidPIT saw previewed firsthand back at IFA in September last year.
According to the post on the Google Mobile Blog, some of the changes that come with the lastest update include "better dropdown boxes to help select the languages you want to translate from and into, an improved input box, and cleaner icons and layout."
Google Translate is currently available on Android devices from Android 2.1 and above, and has support for 53 languages, and voice support for 15 languages.
Take a look at the preview of Conversation mode that we saw back in September in the video below (relevant part starts around 26:45):
Unfortuntately, Conversation Mode currently only works for translating between English and Spanish. In addition, due to the still alpha nature of Conversation Mode, factors like regional dialect, rapid speech, and background noise can create problems with getting a correct translation.
While Google doesn't specifically mention any upcoming support for other languages in Conversation Mode, the fact that the demonstration back at IFA was done in German and English makes me think that support for German is not very far away. It is not unlikely that we could see an update for this and more languages sometime between now and Google I/O. Here's to hoping!
Images from Google Mobile Blog
Deeroid X
I love this app.