Update to Google Translate reportedly bringing automatic voice translation

Google Translate is quite handy when you’re in a pinch, but the app doesn’t come without its woes. When translating, it’s a bit slow and doesn’t really provide a natural conversation experience if you’re trying to communicate with someone that speaks a different language. According to The New York Times, the Translate app is getting an update that should fix those problems. The app will reportedly be able to recognize detected speech then translate it to text in real time to any language you’d like. This will offer a much more fluent experience for users who need something translated at a moment’s notice.

Also according to the report, Google is looking into releasing an app that can read text through the camera and translate it to multiple different languages. In case you forgot, Google purchased Quest Visual, the folks behind Word Lens, about eight months ago. Thanks to that acquisition, we knew something like this would eventually be released. But since this is a very difficult technology to develop, it is obviously taking a bit of time to launch.

No information has been disclosed on when the application will get the update, but we’ll be sure to let you know when updates start rolling out.