How multilingual are you? Sure, you know those international words like “adios,” “namaste,” or “zeitgeist,” but if a chat group on a messaging service contains a long message in Spanish, German, or Chinese, what do you do? WhatsApp has the solution.
Messages in other languages may soon appear in translation on WhatsApp.
In an update that is currently being prepared, WhatsApp will translate all chat messages, according to the reliable and accurate website WABetaInfo. The feature will work via language packs, users will see a notification saying: “read your messages in your preferred language”, with the option to activate a switch so that all new messages in the selected thread are translated. Then, a panel will allow you to choose the language in which the messages should be rendered.
Suddenly, if you’re reading a thread that’s mostly in another language, you won’t need to laboriously copy messages into an external translation app just to keep up.
This comes in handy in many situations, for example if your local housing association’s WhatsApp group has an international constituency but the messaging is done in Spanish, for example.
You won’t have to guess words anymore and those false linguistic friends will be unmasked. So, “Me tengo constipado” will appear correctly as “I have a cold” and not as I thought it meant.
As WABetaInfo points out, “The ability to instantly translate messages during conversations will help keep the flow of communication going, making it easier for users to understand and respond in real-time. While this feature is still under development, it seems that WhatsApp is now committed to further improving this feature with new automatic translation options.”
So far, the feature has been seen in a beta version of the app for Android devices, but it is likely that WhatsApp is working on introducing it for the iPhone as well.
It had previously been reported that the technology was based on Google’s live translation technology, but that no longer appears to be the case. “WhatsApp appears to be developing its own internal technology to support message translation,” the report states. This presents a significant benefit to users as “this approach still preserves end-to-end encryption since their solution will process messages on-device. As a result, WhatsApp needs to download language packs to translate messages.”
Not only is this more secure, it also simplifies interoperability between iPhone and Android users.
What is not yet clear is whether only incoming messages will be translated from the original language to your preferred language, or whether when you reply they will be interpreted the other way around.
More than we have.