14 DAY TRIAL // Google’s Jon Wiley, a principal designer for Google Search, has recently admitted that the company is working on a lot of new projects, including a feature that will help translate multiple languages at once.
As Search Engine Land reports, the designer was asked to share something cool he was working on and the mixed translator was his go-to answer.
When the new feature is released, it’s going to be tremendously helpful for everyone in the world. For instance, many who do not speak English as a native language often mix certain terms from English into their own languages, giving birth to a hybrid of sorts.
“It lets you set multiple languages, and then you can speak in whichever of those languages and Google will automatically detect which you’re using at the moment. So that makes it easier to use Google when you speak multiple languages (at least on the asking-questions side),” Wiley said on the Reddit AMA he participated in.
The translations returned by the service, on the other hand, would be a bit complicated. He explains that since the Internet is such a blend of languages, some amount of machine translation is possible, but things aren’t perfect. We can all attest to these after having to correct every couple of words in a translation over Google’s or Microsoft’s services, for instance.
“But you can add multiple languages for which search results are displayed at Settings> Languages and add them. Then you’ll see both English and German results, depending on what’s relevant,” Wiley said.
Those who speak more languages will certainly find the appeal of the service if Google does indeed end up launching it. There are countless occasions when this type of tool could come in handy, including for international conferences across the world.
On another note, it is quite rare for Google or one of Google’s employees to discuss projects that the company is working on. Regularly, any and all projects, regardless if they’re only in the stage of “fleeting thought” or “nearly ready to be released,” are kept secret.
There are, of course, occasions when some patent makes its way online or someone gives out details about something or another that Google may be working on, but they’re rare. Most often than not, when something about a new project comes forth is due to something spotted by a developer in a source code that Google was trying out.
Now, however, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before the multi-language translator becomes available.