Image credit – The Next Web
Want to translate something on your phone? If it is a phrase or a word, all you’d have to do is copy and paste it into the Google Translate app. However recently Google has made it a bit easier by allowing developers to include the translation feature within their app, thus allowing users to translate a sentence without having to switch apps.
It’s a great idea and a convenient feature, although this feature will largely depend on developers adopting it and implementing it in their apps. That being said, that could change in the future. According to Google’s VP for Product Management Caesar Sengupta during the Google for India event, he revealed that a system-wide translation feature could be coming soon.
As you can see in the screenshots above, what this means is that users can translate within the app via a floating window any word or phrase that they want, all without having to switch apps. Now you might ask what’s the difference between this and the recent feature Google rolled out. Like we said, the other feature requires developers to implement it into their apps, but a system-wide feature means that even if developers don’t, it’ll still be available to users.
According to Sengupta, “Our most active users in India translate between Hindi and English multiple times a day, spending lots of time copying messages from friends or colleagues, translating them, writing responses, translating their responses, and then pasting them back into an app.” This translation feature, also known as Tap to Translate, will be making its way onto Android devices in Q1 2016.