Amazon is launching a very practical feature on the Echo Show, speakers with screens. From this Tuesday, December 15, it is possible to display an on-the-fly translation of your conversation in front of the enclosure. For the time being, however, the functionality is limited to American users.
It is easy to forget the enormous progress that is being made in translation machine learning. Remember, only a decade ago what Google’s machine translations looked like – while the result might be funny at times, in practice it was generally impossible to use such translations even for really understand what it was about in the source language. Today, not only have translations become much more useful, but as a bonus it can be enjoyed on a multitude of devices..
We think, for example, of Google Translate on a smartphone, which will certainly save your money when you are abroad, especially in countries where you do not speak the language, and where your knowledge of English or another modern language is of no help to you. However, translation doped with machine learning is gradually making its way onto other devices. And this is now the case, in particular, with Amazon Echo Show speakers. Amazon announces the arrival of the Live Translation feature in the United States.
The speaker then listens to the conversation in front of it, and displays an on-the-fly translation with the text spoken in your language. For now Live Translation supports English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. To put your Alexa speaker in this mode, you just have to say “Alexa, do the interpreter”. The rest is fully automatic. To end this automated translation, just say “Alexa, stop”.
Also read: Amazon Echo – Alexa can now predict what you are going to ask her
Amazon is not the first company to offer such a feature. Google has been offering a translation mode on its speakers with a screen, such as the Google Nest Hub, since at least 2019. It remains to be seen when this novelty will be available in France on Amazon devices.