This app can translate your favorite games into any language, but there's a big catch

There are tons of games over the years that never saw a release in English-speaking markets. We’ve seen fan translations for the most popular titles, but what if this option isn’t available for your desired game? Thankfully, a recently released Android app addresses this challenge for emulation fans and mobile gamers.

PlayTranslate is an open-source Android app that was quietly released on GitHub back in March, and it offers “real-time” language translation in your favorite games via an overlay. The app uses AI to read 23 in-game languages and then translate them into 59 languages. Translated tongues include English, Hindi, Spanish, Korean, and Russian.

The app was originally released a few months ago and has seen a variety of updates since then. These updates have delivered offline translations with the aid of locally downloaded AI models, text-to-speech functionality, flashcard functionality for language learning, and multi-screen translation.

A great idea, with two major concerns

There are two issues that might deter you from using the app, though. Perhaps the biggest problem is that Google Play Protect blocks the app’s installation due to its sensitive permissions. More specifically, it records your screen and utilizes the “display over other apps” permission. You can temporarily pause Play Protect to install PlayTranslate, but I would caution less tech-savvy users to simply skip the app. In saying so, this is an open-source app, which means you can comb through it yourself if you’d like to check for security issues.

Another potential issue is that the developer has used generative AI to assist with the development of the app. The creator claims to be a senior iOS developer and admitted that the initial prototype was vibecoded. However, they said that they now “direct Claude heavily,” review the app code, and make/validate all the “architectural decisions.” That’s somewhat encouraging news, as purely vibecoded apps pose a security risk if the creator lacks the expertise to adequately review the resulting code. Nevertheless, I completely understand if you want to skip an app developed with generative AI.

I briefly tried the app and found it pretty easy to set up. Simply grant the required permissions and choose your desired input and output languages, and that’s it. The app will automatically download your specific language packs, too. Once you’ve enabled the screen capture toggle, PlayTranslate will appear as a tiny button on the edge of your screen. Tapping this key will summon a floating menu with options to auto-translate text, specify a certain region to be captured, a shortcut to the settings menu, and an option to simply turn off the app.

There is a short delay for translated text to appear when using online translations, and it doesn’t always translate every line on the first go, but it definitely works well enough to navigate menus, read in-game dialog, and more. However, you should probably use offline translations if you’re playing a fast-paced game where you only have a split-second to read text.

Either way, I’m glad to see this translation solution on Android. It won’t beat dedicated fan-translation patches for convenience and seamless integration, but it definitely seems like a solid alternative. However, I hope the developer comes up with a solution to installing the app that doesn’t require disabling Google Play Protect.