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Besides having a great camera, Google’s Pixel line also offers a lot of useful software features. Take the example of “Hold For Me”: this feature allows the Google Assistant to take your place on a phone call while you wait for a business to call you back. When Google creates a new feature that takes advantage of its existing services, the result can be phenomenal. For the upcoming Pixel 6 series, Google plans to do just that by integrating parts of Google Lens, Translate, Assistant, and Live Caption into a feature called Live Translate. Thanks to our source who has access to the new Pixel 6 Pro, XDA can offer an exclusive first look at Live Translate through a few screenshots of the feature.
Last week, a source with access to the Pixel 6 Pro contacted XDA, allowing us to share new details about the phone’s hardware. After speaking with our source, we found out that their Pixel 6 Pro has an all-new version of the Android System Intelligence app, which was previously called Device Personalization Services. This app is responsible for providing several software features on Pixel phones including Live Caption, Screen Attention, etc. As we discovered earlier, this app will also contain the service of the new Live Translate feature, which will debut on the Pixel 6 series, but may also affect older Pixel phones running Android 12.
Live Translate was one of the only new software features Google confirmed when it launched its Pixel 6 marketing blitz last month. At the time, Google hadn’t explicitly confirmed the name of the new feature, but they did point out to publications such as The edge and The Washington Post that the Pixel 6 will be able to generate live translated captions from the content you watch or listen to. The edge even got to see an in-person demo of the transcript and then French to English translation in real time, but unfortunately they weren’t allowed to share any images or videos of the demo. We did, however, manage to get the live translation feature to show up on our own device, allowing us to share some screenshots.
Configure live translation
Starting with the Live Translate setup flow, we can already see that there is one aspect of this functionality that was not previously reported. Live Translate will not only allow you to translate the subtitles into the language of your choice, but it will also translate the messages, the text detected in the camera viewfinder and act as an interpreter, depending on the language you choose.
After completing the initial setup process, Live Translate can be found under Settings> System. Here you will be able to toggle the functionality, choose whether you want to allow downloading of language templates to mobile data, choose the language you want to translate into, and download new language templates. Language models vary in size from 50 to 200MB depending on the supported features. Choosing Japanese, for example, will allow you to translate messages, captions, and text in the camera’s viewfinder, while choosing Mandarin will only allow you to translate messages and text in the camera.
Here is the full list of languages supported in Live Translate and the supported features for each language:
Languages and features supported in Live Translate
- African – Camera
- Albanian – Camera
- Arabic – Camera
- Bangla – Camera
- Belarusian – Camera
- Bulgarian – Camera
- Catalan – Camera
- Chinese – Camera, Messaging
- Croatian – Camera
- Czech – Camera
- Danish – Camera
- Dutch – Camera
- English – Camera, Messaging, Live Closed Captioning, Interpreter Mode
- Esperanto – Camera
- Estonian – Camera
- Finnish – Camera
- French – Camera, Messaging, Live Closed Caption
- Galician – Camera
- German – Camera, messaging, live subtitles
- Greek – Camera
- Haitian Creole – Camera
- No – Camera, Messaging
- Hungarian – Camera
- Icelandic – Camera
- Indonesian – Camera
- Irish – Camera
- Italian – Camera, Messaging, Live Closed Caption
- Japanese – Camera, messaging, live subtitles
- Korean – Camera
- Latvian – Camera
- Lithuanian – Camera
- Macedonian – Camera
- malay – camera
- Maltese – Camera
- Marathi – Camera
- Norwegian – Camera
- Persian – Camera
- Polish – Camera, Messaging
- Portuguese – Camera, messaging, live subtitles
- Romanian – Camera
- Russian – Camera, Messaging
- Slovak – Camera
- Slovenian – Camera
- Spanish – Camera, Messaging, Live Subtitles
- Swahili – Bedroom
- Swedish – Camera
- Tagalog – Camera
- Tamil – Camera
- Telugu – Camera
- Thai – Camera
- Turkish – Camera
- Ukrainian – Camera
- Urdu – Camera
- Vietnamese – Camera
- Welsh – Camera
We weren’t able to get any of the live translation features below to work on our Pixel 3 XL, but our source told us it worked fine on their Pixel 6 Pro, as expected. According to Google, Live Translate works entirely offline and is accelerated by the new Google Tensor chip in the Pixel 6 series, so there are a few things we may be missing to make it work on Google’s Pixel phones powered by Snapdragon. Thus, we are unable to share screenshots of the feature that is actually working at the moment, but we have more screenshots and information that tell us a lot about the feature.
Translation of captions
In order for Live Translate to translate subtitles, you must first activate the Live Caption feature. This is currently accessible under Settings> Sound & Vibration on Android 12, but it looks like Google will add a new settings entry called “Languages & Translation” where you can choose which languages you want to caption and translate into. Coupled with the list above, this new settings page confirms that Live Caption will soon support additional languages beyond English. These new languages include French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. Live Caption on Chrome OS already supports these languages (except for Portuguese), so we’re not surprised at the extended support for languages coming to Android.
Translation of messages
We’re not sure exactly how Live Translate will handle message translations, but a quick scan of the new Android System Intelligence app reveals some insightful details. It looks like the feature will automatically detect when a message you receive is in another language, and when it does, it will display a sheet at the bottom that says “Get translations instantly while you chat.” Translations take place on the device and are never sent to Google. »If you accept, the following sound effect will be played (provided the Pixel 6 is not muted):
auto_translate_inline_translation.ogg
There will of course be an option to turn off translation sounds if you find that annoying. Then a button to “translate all messages in this chat” will also be displayed to speed up the translation of entire conversations. The translated text will be copied to the phone’s clipboard, making it easy to share or forward messages.
If you don’t want to translate a message, you can ignore the bottom sheet, after which you will be told that you can select and copy a message to start the translation again. The feature won’t always annoy the user about future translations, as you have the option of choosing whether or not you want to be prompted to translate whenever a supported language is detected.
We’re not sure if this will work in all messaging apps or if it will only work in pre-approved apps, like Google’s own Messages app.
Translate text in camera
The Google Camera app sometimes displays a suggestion chip at the bottom, powered by Google Lens, whenever it detects something actionable, like an email address. It looks like this integration will be further improved, with Live Translate offering to display text translations in the camera app whenever a supported language is detected. Google Lens can already overlay text translations on the viewfinder in real time, and it can even do it offline. However, it will be practical to integrate this functionality into Google Camera, if that is what the “Camera” functionality implies.
Live Translate will be a useful addition to the Pixel software repertoire. It consolidates the best translation features of Google Translate, Gboard and Assistant, and allows all of these features to be used without an active internet connection. The Pixel 6 series is slated to launch next month, so we’ll have to wait a few weeks to see how fast and convenient this feature is.
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