GoKawiiliPhone users may soon be able to use WhatsApp to communicate with people who don’t speak their language. Here are the details.
Feature works based on Apple’s language translation packs
As spotted by WABetaInfo, the latest beta build of WhatsApp on TestFlight includes references to a per-chat “Translate messages” toggle, which will automatically translate all new incoming messages when activated.
After turning on the feature, users can choose which language messages should be translated from and which language they should be translated into. In the example shown, messages are automatically translated into English.
Currently, WhatsApp whatsapp translation 9to5mac that requires the user to tap and hold the message they want to translate, tap “More…”, then select the original and target languages.
While the new feature isn’t readily available to beta testers, WABetaInfo says users will be able to translate the entire conversation by default, adding that it will work in both one-on-one and group chats (provided all participants send messages in the same language).
As with the per-message translation feature, this relies on Apple’s on-device language packs. This means that translations are processed locally, maintaining end-to-end encryption on chats.
Currently, Apple supports Arabic, Dutch, English (United Kingdom), English (United States), French (France), German (Germany), Hindi, Indonesian, Italian (Italy), Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese (China mainland), Mandarin Chinese (Taiwan), Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish (Spain), Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.
As Apple adds more supported languages to its Translate App, support will also expand on WhatsApp.
As with any feature in WhatsApp’s TestFlight build, there’s no official release timeline yet.
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