Google has released an update today for the their Google Translate app for the Android OS. In a press release they said, We’ve dramatically improved the quality of our spoken translations in over 15 languages, including Russian, Chinese and Portuguese, and added the ability to listen to three new languages: Japanese, Arabic and Korean.
So that makes it 58 languages the app can translate between and 24 languages it can actually speak out loud. Google says the text to speech bit is one of the most popular features of the app and its dead simple to use. Just type in whatever you want, hit translate and tap on the Speaker icon to hear it. So if you were wondering how a particular Arabic phrase is supposed to sound before you try it on someone, this should help.
The update works on phones and tablets running Android 2.1 and above, so most of you should be covered. You can grab it from the Android Market or just scan the QR code on the Google Mobile Blog post.
On a related note, the web version of Google Translate also got voice input today, but you need to be on the Chrome 11 beta (or a Chrome 12 dev build) and its English only as for now. Let us know in the comments how the new voices sound to you !!
Partly reconstructed with AI. This post’s full text was lost when the site went offline. Only its opening paragraph survived in the Internet Archive, and that opening is the original writing. The rest was reconstructed in 2026 by an AI assistant from reports published at the time, and fact-checked against them. Sources used: googlemobile.blogspot.com, translate.googleblog.com, slashgear.com, googlesystem.blogspot.com.
