Google’s New AI Capabilities Will Extend to Its Translation App

Improved context, added gestures, and more

By
Lawrence Bonk
Lawrence Bonk
Lawrence Bonk
News Reporter
  • Florida State University
Lawrence Bonk is a tech news reporter for Lifewire, specializing in gaming, AI, VR, and consumer tech, including iOS, macOS, wearables, and more.
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Published on February 8, 2023 11:42AM EST
Fact checked by
Jerri Ledford
Jerri Ledford
Fact checked by Jerri Ledford
  • Western Kentucky University
  • Gulf Coast Community College
Jerri L. Ledford has been writing, editing, and fact-checking tech stories since 1994. Her work has appeared in Computerworld, PC Magazine, Information Today, and many others.
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Google has added a suite of new features to its language translation app, Google Translate. 

The main purpose of this redesign is to increase relevancy and provide accurate context when queried. To that end, Google has employed its artificial intelligence (AI) to help the system craft nuanced and context-rich answers to translation queries. 

Someone holding a phone in front of them speaking into it as if using language translation.

Pollyana Ventura / Getty Images

What does this mean exactly? Using AI, Google Translate will be better at applying local idioms and appropriate words depending on your intent. For instance, asking how to order bass for dinner yields different results than asking how to play the bass at a jam session. These kinds of simple mixups used to be the bane of translation apps. 

These AI enhancements will first be available for translation queries in English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish, with more languages rolling out in the next few weeks. 

That’s not the only change coming to Google Translate. The company is adding new gestures to increase accessibility, such as swiping down on the home screen to bring up recent translations. The font also automatically adjusts as text is typed to make everything more readable. 

There are also 33 new languages available for on-demand use, such as Kurdish, Latin, Luxembourgish, Sundanese, Yiddish, and Zulu, among others. This allows users to download translation data if they are traveling somewhere without Wi-Fi or data. 

These updates will launch throughout the month to users all around the world.

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