Whoa: Google Meet can now translate a foreign language in real-time

You already know Google Translate, but what about live voice translation in Google Meet?

This feature is one of the major Workspace announcements Google shared at its annual I/O event on Tuesday. Starting today, Google is rolling out real-time speech translation in Google Meet for subscribers of its AI Premium plan. When a user on a Google Meet video call turns on this feature, an AI audio model uses their speech to live translate what they’re saying into another language. Google is starting with English and Spanish, with more languages coming in the next few weeks.

The experience results in the person’s actual voice being heard at a low volume, with the translated voice heard at a regular volume. Demos of speech translation show a brief moment of latency before the live translation begins. “Think simultaneous interpreter, or someone who listens to a speaker while concurrently saying the words in another language,” said Yulie Kwon Kim, VP of Product for Google Workspace in a pre-event briefing, “and then take it to the next level, where the interpreter is not another person’s voice, but the speaker’s own voice.”

Kwon Kim highlighted how the underlying technology is trained to capture “the speaker’s tone, intonation and emotion in the translated language,” resulting in a free-flowing conversation with someone in a different language.

If you’ve ever relied on Google Translate or another translating app to communicate with a cab driver in a foreign country or to order off a menu in a different language, you probably understand the game-changing usefulness of live translation. Google used the example of talking to an Airbnb host about an upcoming trip, but one could also imagine talking to relatives or conducting research with people who speak a different language.

Of course, there’s a little bit of sadness associated with the premise that we might never need to learn new languages if technology like this becomes more widespread. But it has undeniable potential for communicating important information in a pinch.

Speech translation in Google Meet launches today in beta for subscribers of the Google One AI Premium plan, which costs $20 a month. Google says it’s testing the feature for Workspace customers later this year.