Google is planning to launch an update to its Google Translate app for phones, enabling automatic, real-time translation of voice to text for a few languages, The New York Times reports.
In its current iteration, the app can translate text-to-text between 80 languages, and offers voice to text translation, but it's not automatic -- you have to choose the desired input language for it to work. After the update, the app will automatically recognize when someone is speaking in "a popular" language and turn it into text in the chosen language.
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The report does not offer any more details about the update, nor when it's supposed to be launched, other than saying it'll happen "soon."
Google had announced it's working on this technology in July 2013. Back then, Google's VP of Android product management Hugo Barra said the technology is still years away for all languages, but some language pairs, including English and Portuguese, were already working "near perfect."
Still, while Google has been perfecting its translation technology for years now, it's a bit behind the curve on this one. Microsoft's Sykpe launched its Translator Preview in December 2014, enabling real-time voice-to-voice translation between English and Spanish speakers.