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Google Translate’s Android app can translate speech live between eight languages. There is support for the English and German languages, among others; Dutch has no support for the time being.

The live translation of conversations was announced in January and was expected to be released in the next few months. During that time, Google wanted to solve a number of problems, including being able to better isolate a conversation without including too much background noise.

Initially, the function will only work with eight languages. Calls in Russian, Hindi, English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai can be converted directly into text on Android devices as of this week, with possibly more languages in the future. Google also hopes to add a feature in the future that will allow conversations that have already been recorded to be translated afterwards; for the time being, it only works live. In addition, Google is letting us know that it is working on the functionality of the app in more situations, as the app now works best in quiet environments with just one person speaking.

Google also wants to bring the feature to iOS, but didn’t set a release date for it yet. For Android users, it is only important to have the latest version of Translate installed, after which an option to translate directly would appear. An external recording device connected to the phone can improve the quality.