- The Google app uses Neural Machine Translation to give more accurate results
- This AI will now be available offline on iOS and Android in 59 languages
- Google says that each language will take up 35 to 45MB on mobile devices
Being tongue-tied on holiday could become a thing of the past thanks to a major update to Google’s Translate feature.
Two years ago it introduced translating AI called ‘neural machine translation (NMT)’ to improve the accuracy of translations – and now this is available offline.
Phones running on both iOS and Android will be able to take advantage of the new update and it will be available in 59 languages.
Two years ago Google introduced translating AI called ‘neural machine translation (NMT)’ to improve the accuracy of translations – and now this is available offline
Google says that each language won’t take up too much storage – just 35 to 45Mb.
The neural system translates whole sentences at a time, rather than piece by piece.
It also uses broader context to help determine the most relevant translation, which it then rearranges and adjusts to sound more like a real person speaking with proper grammar.
Phones running on both iOS and Android will be able to take advantage of the new update and it will be available in 59 languages
Google says this makes translated paragraphs and articles a lot smoother and easier to read.
However, last year several Google Translate users took to Twitter to complain about Google’s ‘sexist’ translations in its Translate tool.
When translating phrases from gender-neutral languages including Turkish and Finnish, users noticed at the time that Google gave male pronouns to certain professions, such as police, engineer and leader.
In contrast, female pronouns were given to jobs including secretary, nanny and nurse.
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