Imagine trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak English particularly well over messaging apps like WhatsApp; it can be difficult, right? Imagine if that conversation was peppered in sentences and phrases made in a foreign language, forcing you to copy and paste it into a translation app to figure out what it means.
The good news is that if you run an Android device, you won’t have to do that anymore. Google has recently announced an update to Google Translate. What this does is it allows developers to bake Google Translate into their apps with the text-selection behavior. What this means is that you will no longer have to leave your app in order to get certain words or sentences translated.
This is a pretty convenient feature but given that it’s the onus of the developer to bake the feature into the app, not all apps will have it yet, or at all. However the good news is that some major apps are on board. According to Google, these apps include TripAdvisor, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn.
If you use those apps a lot then you should be able to expect the translate feature built into the app in an update. We expect that more apps will follow in their footsteps if the feature is relevant to them, so keep an eye out for your app updates if this is something you’d like to see.
Filed in . Read more about Android, Apps, Google and Google Translate.