Amazon is launching a handy feature on Echo Show speakers. Starting this Tuesday, December 15, it is possible to display a translation on the fly of your conversation in front of the speaker. For now, however, the functionality is limited to U.S. users.
It is easy to forget the enormous progress that is being made in translation doped to machine learning. Remember, only a decade ago, what Google’s machine translations looked like- if the result could sometimes be fun, in practice it was usually impossible to use such translations if only to really understand what it was about in the source language. Today, not only have translations become much more useful, but as a bonus we can enjoy them on a multitude of devices.
One thinks, for example, of Google Translation on smartphone, which will certainly save you the bet when you stay abroad, especially in countries where you do not master the language, and where your knowledge of English or another living language is of no helpto you. However, the translation doped to machine learning is gradually making its way on other devices. And that’s now the case, for example, with Amazon Echo Show speakers. Amazon announces the arrival of Live Translation in the United States.
The speaker then listens to the conversation in front of it, and displays a translation on the fly with text in your language. For now Live Translation supports English, French, Hindi German, Italian, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. To put your Alexa speaker in this mode, you simply have to say “Alexa, do the interpreter”. The rest is fully automatic. To end this automated translation, simply say “Alexa, stop.”
Read also: Amazon Echo – Alexa can now predict what you’re going to ask her
Amazon is not the first company to offer such a feature. Google has been offering a translation mode on its screened speakers, such as the Google Nest Hub, since at least 2019. It remains to be seen when this new feature will be available in France on Amazon devices.
