Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant is already capable of translating words and phrases but Amazon reportedly wants it to do much more than that. According to a new report, the company wants to turn Alexa into a real-time universal language translator. It aims to make Alexa a context-savvy language translator and the report claims that the Alexa group at the company is “seriously exploring” ways to make Alexa more useful across different languages and cultures.
Yahoo Finance reports that one of the ways being considered would allow Alexa to translate languages in a more sophisticated manner. It will essentially double as a multilingual assistant that can help in almost any situation.
So for instance if someone from the U.S. attends a wedding in Japan without knowing a word of Japanese, Alexa would help the person hold a conversation in the local language. It would ideally have an understanding of Japanese culture as well and would incorporate that knowledge into its translations.
“Asking the virtual assistant, “Alexa, what do I say to the father of the bride at a wedding in Japan?” would solicit a different response and tone from Alexa than if you asked the assistant ”What do I say to the master of ceremonies at a wedding in Japan?,” the report says.
Alexa would understand in this scenario that the remarks made to the father’s bride have to be more formal and reverential than those made to the master of ceremony.
Amazon reportedly also wants Alexa to be capable of translating languages on-the-fly which means that if someone is talking to you in a local language that you do not understand, Amazon would translate it into your native language in real-time.
Amazon hasn’t commented on this report as yet so it’s unclear how far along the development is on these capabilities and when we can expect them to go live.