Google Translate Now Helps You Practice Your Pronunciation

Despite many intermittent attempts over the years to learn another language, I currently only speak English. I understand some words and phrases in Spanish and Portuguese, but I can’t have a conversation in these two languages ​​and I would like to change that. It turns out that Google Translate’s latest feature might help me a bit on my language learning journey, even if it’s a bit brutally honest along the way.

As TechCrunch reports, Google Translate now offers pronunciation practice as part of its experience, a la Duolingo. Like Duoligno, Google Translate can listen to your attempt to say a specific word, phrase, or sentence and will offer feedback based on how its AI thinks you did. The app can even offer pronunciation tips, so you can focus less on pronouncing words yourself, and more on how those words sound phonetically. Nick Fox, senior vice president of insights and insights at Google, shared the new feature in an article on Tuesday:

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According to the article, here’s how it’s supposed to work: Once you enter a word, phrase, or sentence and the app translates it, a new “Practice” option appears at the bottom of the page. Tap on it and you will open the “Pronunciation” menu. You can listen to the translation again, but tap “Speak” and Google Translate will open a context menu with the phonetic pronunciation listed below 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 tips. In the example above, Google Translate told the user they were “going in the right direction” but “some sounds weren’t clear.”

Google’s pronunciation practice not yet fully rolled out

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 rolled out slowly and half-heartedly. On my Pixel 8 Pro, I don’t have any options. On my iPhone I have a similar functionality, but not quite what is advertised here. Here’s how it works: After translating something, I don’t have the “Practice” option at the bottom of the screen. However, I TO DO I have a “Speak” option that appears when I press the translation speaker button. This gives an experience very close to what was shown 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 its transliteration. It’s not useless, but phonetic spelling would be much easier to follow, especially when trying Hindi. Unfortunately, I can’t read Devanagari characters, so it’s not very helpful when Google asks me to focus on them while trying to speak.

“Try saying…” doesn’t really work when I don’t understand the characters, Google.
Credit: Lifehacker

Yet, I was able to use both the transliteration and the audio of the translation in my attempt to speak the language. Once I finished speaking, I discovered another oddity that wasn’t in Google’s announcement: a rating! In addition to direct feedback, Google gave me a percentage out of 100 based on my results. In general, I do much better in Spanish than in Hindi, but this is 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 experience advertised here. But even in its current form, it is a useful tool. I look forward to Google expanding the languages ​​supported here, but, for now, anyone interested in learning Spanish or Hindi may find benefit from this feature, assuming it appears on your device.