Google Translate comes to Gboard for iOS

Technology giant Google has always added useful features to its apps. Just yesterday, Google Maps got the ability to report accidents and speed traps. And now, the technology company has rolled out the Google Translate feature to its Gboard app for iOS.

We should mention that Google Translate has been present on Gboard for Android since 2017 and it can be accessed by tapping on the dedicated icon on the suggestion bar. Alternatively, users can also click on Google button to access the Translate feature.

The patch notes of the update for Gboard for iOS says that “all the languages supported by Google Translate” are available. We should mention that at the time of writing, Google Translate had support for 103 languages. Although the software automatically detects new languages and offers to translate them, you can also go and pick languages manually.

The last major update for Gboard for iOS included feedback for keyboard, which is also a feature that is not available in the built-in iOS keyboard. Gboard’s Android version recently got support for support for enhanced offline voice dictation. However, we should point out that the feature is currently only available for English-speaking Pixel smartphone owners.

The artificial intelligence-based offline dictation would speak out the emails and texts to users even when their smartphones are not connected to internet.

Speaking about the new feature, Johan Schalkwyk from Speech Team of Google, wrote in a blog post, “We’re happy to announce the rollout of an end-to-end, all-neural, on-device speech recogniser to power speech input in Gboard which is always available, even when you are offline. This means no more network latency or spottiness — the new recogniser is always available, even when you are offline. The model works at the character level, so that as you speak, it outputs words character-by-character, just as if someone was typing out what you say in real-time, and exactly as you’d expect from a keyboard dictation system.”

He further added, “Our new all-neural, on-device Gboard speech recogniser is initially being launched to all Pixel phones in American English only. Given the trends in the industry, with the convergence of specialised hardware and algorithmic improvements, we are hopeful that the techniques presented here can soon be adopted in more languages and across broader domains of application. We are hopeful that the techniques presented here can soon be adopted in more languages and across broader domains of application.”