Being able to translate menus, requests, and signboards is useful when you’re traveling overseas. But having a conversation? Not so much. Thankfully, it looks like Google is bringing offline Live Translate to some Pixel phones.
Offline Live Translate coming to some Google Pixel phones
For those unfamiliar, Live Translate is a feature of Google Translate that lets users have conversations with each other in their native tongues. Basically, you say what you want to say, it gets translated, then the other person replies and that is translated too. It’s more efficient than the basic translation feature.
However, the problem with Live Translate is that it requires a data connection. If you’re traveling or somewhere with a spotty connection, it becomes less useful. However, Android Authority has discovered that Google is bringing Live Translate offline to some Pixel devices. This means that if you have a compatible Pixel phone, you might be able to use this feature without an internet connection.
Based on what they discovered, there are only a few languages that are supported. This includes French, German, Hindi, Indonesia, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Presumably support for more languages will arrive at a later date.
But there’s a catch
Before you get too excited, note that there is a catch. For starters, it only works between those languages and English. For example, at least one of the speakers needs to be speaking English. That means you cannot do a French and Hindi offline Live Translate. It needs to be French to English or Hindi to English and so on.
Secondly, not all Pixel phones support it. According to Google’s support page, compatible devices include the Pixel 9, 10, and 11 series. We’re not sure why older models aren’t supported, but it is speculated that this is because the Live Translate feature relies on Gemini Nano.
As a result, only Google’s newer chipsets with upgraded NPU and memory are capable of processing these translations offline and on-device. This is bad news for those running the Pixel 8 or older.
The post Pixel Owners Could Soon Use Live Translate Without a Data Connection appeared first on Android Headlines.
​Â
