Google Translate is a useful tool for many people and is soon going to become much easier to use for those who don't have a good internet connection.
Google is releasing an updated version of Google Translate for Android that will allow it to work offline on more phones and take up less space. This will be done thanks to a new algorithm based on phrase recognition, which uses an artificial intelligence translation system, which was developed in collaboration with the company's deep learning team, Google Brain.
According to Google Translate manager Julie Cattiau, translations will now be made taking into account the entire sentence and not just a few words.
Cattiau says the team has been rebuilding Google Translate from the ground up over the past year and a half, resulting in “more perfect technology” than the service’s previous decade of existence.
Cattiau traveled to many parts of the world to learn what changes users wanted. Two of those places were India and Indonesia, where Google Translate is most widely used (according to Google, 90 percent of the service's translations are done outside the United States). She found that people there often didn't have access to the internet when they wanted to translate, which increased the need for offline translation capabilities.
While users could previously download languages to Google Translate, the files were usually too large for the cheaper smartphones common in these markets. With the update, each language now takes up only 35-45 MB, significantly increasing the tool's accessibility.
But not all features use the AI-powered technology. The new algorithm won't support translations from an augmented reality camera — known as Word Lens — or handwritten translations, but Cattiau said developers are looking into adding those in a future update.
Google has been experimenting with offline translations on a small subset of users and will be rolling out the feature in the coming weeks. The new feature is available in 59 languages in total – check out the Google Translate website for the full list
