Despite many intermittent attempts throughout the years to learn another language, I currently speak only English. I understand some words and phrases in Spanish and Portuguese, but I can’t have a conversation in either, and I’d like to change that. As it happens, Google Translate’s newest feature might be able to help me a bit on my language learning journey—even if it is a bit brutally honest along the way.
As reported by TechCrunch, Google Translate now offers pronunciation practice as part of its experience, a la Duolingo. Like Duoligno, Google Translate can listen to your attempt at speaking a specific word, phrase, or sentence, and will offer feedback based on how its AI thinks you did. The app can even offer pronunciation guidance, so you can focus less on trying to sound out the words yourself, and more on how those words phonetically sound. Nick Fox, senior vice president of Knowledge & Information at Google, shared the new feature in an X post on Tuesday:
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Per the post, here’s how it’s supposed to work: Once you enter a word, phrase, or sentence and the app translates it, a new “Practice” options appears at the bottom of the page. Tap this, and you’ll open the “Pronunciation” menu. You can listen to the translation again, but tap “Pronounce,” and Google Translate will open a pop-up menu with the phonetic pronunciation listed beneath the translation. In tandem, the app activates your device’s mic, so you can start speaking. Once you’re done, the app processes your attempt and gives you some advice. In the example above, Google Translate told the user they were “Moving in the right direction,” but “some sounds were a little unclear.”
Google’s pronunciation practice isn’t quite rolling out in full yet
This pronunciation feature seems like a great addition to one of (if not the) most popular translation apps in the world. And yet, the feature seems to be rolling out both slowly and half-finished. On my Pixel 8 Pro, I don’t have the option whatsoever. On my iPhone, I have a similar feature, but not quite what’s advertised here. Here’s how I’ve gotten that to work: After translating something, I don’t have the “Practice” option at the bottom of the screen. However, I do have a “Speak” option that appears when I hit the speaker button on the translation. This pulls up a very close experience to what was displayed in Fox’s post: I get the translation and the ability to speak into the mic, but I don’t get the clear phonetic spelling—just the transliteration of it. It’s not unhelpful, but the phonetic spelling would be much easier to follow along, especially when I’m trialing Hindi. Unfortunately, I can’t read Devanagari characters, so it isn’t all that helpful when Google asks me to focus on them while trying to speak.
What do you think so far?
“Try saying…” doesn’t really work when I don’t understand the characters, Google.
Credit: Lifehacker
Still, I was able to go off of both the transliteration and the audio of the translation in my attempt to speak the language. Once I finished speaking, I found another quirk not featured in Google’s announcement: a grade! In addition to direct feedback, Google gave me a percentage score out of 100 based on how well it thinks I did. I typically fare much better with Spanish than Hindi, but it’s only my first day trying the latter after all.
Maybe after Google rolls out the feature a bit more, I’ll get more of the advertised experience here. But even in its current form, this is a useful tool. I look forward to Google expanding the supported languages here, but, for now, anyone looking to learn Spanish or Hindi may find a boost with this feature—assuming it appears on your device.
