Google now lets you talk more to your phone and type less with their latest update in voice-to-text dictation. Their neural network can now transcribe up to 119 language varieties and that is awesome. Google is also honouring languages around the world by supporting languages like ancient Georgian, two African tongues Swahili and Amharic, and up to 9 Indian dialects. Learn how Google made this possible and how to talk to your phone instead of typing.
How Google Made This Possible
As a part of the update, Google added 30 new languages and locales with the help of native speakers. They collected voice samples from native speakers by asking them to read common phrases. They then trained their machine learning models based on neural networks to understand the sounds and words of these new languages. The accuracy got better over time by exposing to more samples.
List of Newly Supported Languages
Amharic (Ethiopia), Armenian (Armenia), Azerbaijani (Azerbaijani), Bengali (Bangladesh, India), English (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Georgian (Georgia), Gujarati (India), Javanese (Indonesia), Kannada (India), Khmer (Cambodian), Lao (Laos), Latvian (Latvia), Malayalam (India), Marathi (India), Nepali (Nepal), Sinhala (Sri Lanka), Sundanese (Indonesia), Swahili (Tanzania, Kenya), Tamil (India, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia), Telugu (India), and Urdu (Pakistan, India).
How To Search With Your Voice
You can now talk to Google or ask a question in any of the supported languages. For example, if you are driving or walking down the street and you feel hungry, just ask it for restaurants nearby in your preferred language. To search with your voice, open the Google app and pick your language from the Voice settings menu (tap the top-left menu and then Settings, pick Voice and select your language).
How To Type On Gboard With Your Voice
You can now type documents, SMS or email with the help of Gboard and voice recognition. This feature comes handy when you are on the move and you can’t type on the small phone keyboard. To enable Voice Typing in your keyboard, install Gboard from the Play Store and choose your language (press the G in the suggestion strip and select the Settings wheel). Then just tap the microphone to start speaking.
How To Speak Your Emoji
Google now lets you speak your emoji in addition to drawing or typing it. It’s now only possible in English in U.S., For example, try saying “winky face emoji”, “Colbert emoji”. However, we noticed that on saying “smiley face” Gboard will type “:)”. Soon speak your emoji feature will be added to more languages.
These new languages are also made available in Cloud Speech API and will soon be available across other Google apps and products, including the Translate app. By adding more and more languages to their service Google is aiming to serve better its ever increasing user base. With current progress rate, even systems like Cyberdyne will become a reality one day. Hope you enjoyed the write-up, Peace!