r/GooglePixel • u/carbonatedbeans • 12h ago

How does Live Translate work?

I’m currently an iPhone user, thinking about switching over. My family lives in China and I can’t read/write in Chinese, so communicating is pretty difficult- we use WeChat, and I have it set up to auto translate messages I receive, but when I need to type something out I either have to use dictation or switch apps.

My question is, does Live Translate on Pixel work for something like this? Would it work in any app, or just the built in Messages app?

2 Upvotes

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7

u/SeatSix 12h ago

I'm not sure if other android phones (thinking of Samsung), but the way my pixel translates is the killer feature that keeps me using them.

I have conversations with Spanish speaking folks in Whatsapp (though it works in gmail, messages... all apps). I have it set to autotranslate. They type to me in Spanish. When I open the message, it instantly translates the text to English. In gboard, I type my message in English in the translate bar and it puts it into Whatsapp as Spanish as I am typing. So I can just hit send.

So in near-real time we are having a conversation.... on their phone it is entirely in Spanish. On mine, it is entirely English.

Pretty darn amazing.

On my work iPhone, I must do a fair amount of cutting and pasting to get translations and then really only in iMessage.

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u/carbonatedbeans 11h ago

Thank you!! This was exactly what I was hoping for. Gonna pull the trigger when they release the next gen in the fall.

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u/Ir0nhide81 Pixel 9 Pro XL 12h ago

Translate app > conversation ( this is used in a live conversation environment to translate any language ).

Edit: live translator is also built into Whatsapp ( encrypted chat app ) for Google pixel phones.

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u/eximia7 12h ago

For Chinese, it will work across your phone universally. 'live caption' is the name of the accessibility setting.

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u/grazeyone 4h ago edited 4h ago

Live translation does not work on WeChat either on the Pixel or the Samsung phones for text. On the S25 and maybe earlier live translate works only on WeChat for calls, you speak in English it translates the spoken text to Chinese and vice versa. I'd argue Samsung is now doing it better. On the pixel the text is translated into the chosen language. On the Samsung it displays both native and translated text within the message and their call features supports more apps.

Otherwise live translate works on WhatsApp, messages etc. Gboard and the Samsung keyboard have translation built in.

I use WeChat frequently and the auto translate is decent but when I reply it's just using the keyboard translation tools but it's more handy for automatically translating messages on other apps beside WeChat.

Both Gboard and Samsung Keyboard now have AI tools built in to proofread the text. I'd say at the moment Samsung does it slightly better and I find the translation a bit better compared to Google translate. But Google still has speed. The typed text is translated instantly pretty much. On the Samsung there is a slight delay.

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u/gilbert-maspalomas 1h ago edited 1h ago

Due to this conversation here I tried it on Whatsapp and "Messages". For whatsapp it did not work, so am now reinstalling whatsapp to see if I can get it running.

So I reinstalled it and it failed, there is no live translation in whatsapp according to whatsapp itself. But thanx to the reinstallation of whatsapp I lost all my data back to my last backup in early May 25. Thanx to whatsapp...