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Google is celebrating Translate's 20th birthday by launching pronunciation practice, which the company says is one of the most requested features for the product. The feature is only rolling out on Android at the moment for English, Spanish and Hindi in the US and India. If it's available for you, you'll see a button at the bottom of the app that says "Practice," which gives you the option to either "pronounce" what you've translated or to "listen" to how it's actually pronounced by native speakers.
If you choose the "pronounce" option, Translate will listen to you speak and then use artificial intelligence to analyze how you said the words to provide instance feedback. It will then show you a phonetic spelling of how specific words should be pronounced. In the example Google provided, for instance, the speaker pronounced the Spanish word for juice as "jugo" with the English "j" sound instead of with the Spanish "j" sound. So, Translate spells it out as "HU-go" in its pronunciation suggestion.
Google said around third of users on mobile use Translate to practice speaking and listening in order to be able to hold real-world conversations, making this new feature a very useful addition. The company also revealed other stats about the app. Apparently, it now supports over 250 languages, including some endangered and indigenous ones, and has over 1 billion monthly user who have been translating over 1 trillion words every month.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-translate-uses-ai-to-help-you-practice-pronunciation-160000542.html?src=rss
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After once backing liberal causes, the Google co-founder has praised President Trump, donated to Republicans and spent $57 million to try to block a California billionaire tax.
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The Turkish parliament has voted through a bill that would ban all children under the age of 15 from using social media. As part of the legislation, social media platforms would be required to enforce age-verification measures on their apps, provide parental control tools, and react more quickly to harmful content being posted.
As reported by The Associated Press, lawmakers have passed the bill in the wake of two deadly school shootings in Turkey, after which police arrested 162 people accused of sharing footage of the tragedies online.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan now has 15 days to accept the bill in order for it to become law, after reportedly saying social media platforms had become "cesspools" in a televised address to the nation.
As well as the major social media platforms, AP reports that online gaming companies would also have to implement their own restrictions on minors, with potential punishments including bandwidth reductions and financial penalties.
This isn't the first time Turkey has locked horns with social media and online gaming platforms. Instagram has been blocked in the country before, back in 2024, relating to a dispute over the posting of Hamas-related content. Access was restored around a week later, but in the same time period Turkey also banned Roblox over reports of inappropriate sex
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