Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR Translate appears to be working on an AI-powered button that offers alternatives to what you’re trying to translate.
The alternatives may convey slightly different meaning, or offer different levels of formality.
Google could introduce this option alongside the “Understand” and “Ask” buttons we saw earlier.
Many of us have spent the last couple years learning that modern AI does some things a whole lot better than others. While it sometimes misreports facts, “hallucinating” details, it tends to do a pretty decent job at stringing a few words together — even incorrect results don’t end up sounding like gibberish. That makes translation a pretty obvious target for AI’s skill set, and today we’ve spotted what looks like some new AI-powered functionality Google’s working on for its Translate app.
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Google’s been working on some AI upgrades in Translate for a while now — it’s coming up on nearly a year ago since we first spotted the yet-to-be-added “Ask a Follow-up” button that could help deliver extra contextual info about translation results. More recently, that’s been looking like it may take the form of separate “Understand” and “Ask” buttons when it arrives.
Ahead of that, we’ve identified one more addition developers have been building for Translate: the ability to view alternative translations.
For this, we’re looking at version 10.0.36.855137688.3-release of Google Translate for Android. Right now, none of this is visible in the app — pull it up today, and you’ll see what we have on the left here. But once we force the app to show us those in-development “Understand” and “Ask” buttons, we’re now also getting this new “Show alternatives” option.
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