You can now use Google Assistant as an interpreter on Google Home devices

– Hello, how are you? 
– 非常 好, 谢谢.

One of the benefits of artificial intelligence is that it allows devices to perform increasingly complex tasks, without humans having to endeavor to develop them. In the same way that calculators help us add without having to do accounts, now translators will help us communicate between different languages ​​without learning them .

The Google translator has been one of the most competent in several dozens of languages ​​for years. That’s a long way from having live conversations, of course. After announcing in the past CES 2019 Google activates the interpreter mode with instant translation to communicate between different languages ​​on various devices such as the Google Home Hub .

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Although it is only possible to activate it from a few languages ​​- Spanish, English, French, German, Italian and Japanese – the system will translate among the following : Spanish , Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

The first tests in this way do not seem too flattering. And is that the usual translation errors are added to understanding the words of the interlocutors and, as if that were not enough, those of understanding them. Therefore, I would not recommend this feature in conversations that are too relevant at the moment.

How to activate it

It is necessary to make sure that the device – Google Home, Home Mini, Home Max or Home Hub – has the latest software version. A restart of the same must force this installation. The instructions are as simple as saying the magic words, “Ok, Google” and then a command similar to the following:

• “Be my Indian interpreter.”
• “Help me speak Hindi.”
• “Interpret from English to korean.”
• “Telugu interpreter.”
• “Activate the interpreter mode.”
• Finally, a command such as “stop” or “exit” will suffice.