How multi-lingual are you?
you know those international words from adios to namaste to zeitgeist, but if a group chat on a messaging service has a long message in Spanish, or German or Chinese, what do you do? WhatsApp has the answer.
In an update that’s in the works, WhatsApp will translate all chat messages, according to the reliably accurate website WABetaInfo.
The feature will work through language packs, with users seeing a notification which says:
“read your messages in your preferred language,” with the option to toggle a switch so all new messages in the selected thread will be translated. Then, a panel will let you choose the language into which the messages should be rendered.
Suddenly, if you’re reading a thread that’s mostly in another language, you won’t need to copy messages laboriously into an external translation app to be able to keep up.
This is handy in lots of situations, for instance, if your local housing association WhatsApp group has an international constituency but where messaging is conducted in Spanish, say.
No longer will you need to guess at words, and those linguistic false friends will be outed. So, “Me tengo constipado” will correctly appear as “I have a cold,” and not what I thought it meant.
As WABetaInfo comments, “The ability to translate messages instantly during conversations will help maintain the flow of communication, making it easier for users to understand and respond in real-time. Although this feature is still in development, it seems that WhatsApp is now committed to further enhancing this functionality through new automatic translation options.”
So far, the feature has been seen in a beta version of the app for Android devices, though it is likely WhatsApp is working on introducing it for the iPhone as well.
Previously, it had been reported that the technology was based on Google’s live translation technology, but that seems no longer to be the case.
“It looks like WhatsApp is actually developing its own in-house technology to support message translation,” the report says. This has a big benefit for users as, “This approach still preserves end-to-end encryption as their solution will process messages on-device.
Therefore, WhatsApp needs to download some language packs to translate messages.”
Forbes
