Google is planning to automatically detecting the language spoken by foreigners and translate their speech. Skype Translator was a jaw dropping tech announcements of 2014. Still in preview, the service provides real-time translation between spoken Spanish and English, allowing people who don’t share a common language to hold a conversation.
Now, according to the New York Times, Google is planning to beef up its own Translate mobile app. A forthcoming update will automatically detect if someone is speaking one of a few common languages and turn their speech into text.
Automatic spoken language detection is already part of the Google Translate desktop app, although it’s not clear from the report whether this will eventually be built into Google Hangouts to provide a genuine alternative to Skype Translator.