Google ‘Translate’ app offers offline translations, conversation mode

New Delhi, Sep 13 (IANS) Google on Wednesday announced updates to its "Translate" app that would enable users in Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu languages to use offline translations and instant visual translation in their preferred language.

Google "Translate" has also added support for conversation mode feature -- that lets users have a bilingual conversation with someone, simply by talking to "Translate" app -- in regional languages such as Bengali and Tamil.

To activate the feature, users should tap the mic to start speaking in a selected language, then tap the mic again, and the "Translate" app will automatically recognise which of the two languages are being spoken, enabling a smooth conversation, the company said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the offline support enables users (of Indian languages) to translate a word or sentence even when they are not connected to the Internet. To use offline translations, the user needs to download the specific language pack from the "Translate" app when connected to the Internet.

The app already lets the user use camera mode to snap a photo of the English text and get a translation in these languages.

All features announced by the search engine giant are available in Hindi on the Google "Translate" app and have started to roll out in the additional Indian languages both on Android and iOS devices.

Earlier this year, Google had launched a set of new products and features to help create more language content and better serve the needs of new users coming online.

Google also recently announced voice input support for eight additional Indian languages.

Google's speech recognition now supports 119 languages in Gboard on Android, Voice Search and more.