The Telegram app for Android recently received a major update, adding a whole host of new features that make the app much more interactive and fun to use. One such convenience tool allows you to instantly translate any message you’ve received in a non-native language — all that without even leaving the chat window. It should come in handy when talking to your friends and colleagues from the other corner of the world, which is a pretty common scenario these days. But before you can start using the feature, you must enable it in the Telegram app, and here’s how you can do that.
How to enable translation in Telegram for Android
Telegram already has a dedicated section to pick your preferred language for the app interface. The new translation feature is made available in that same section.
- Tap on the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines) in the top left corner of the homepage.
- Go to Settings.
- Open Language.
- Toggle on Show Translate Button.
Right below that toggle sits the option to exclude your native or any other language that you are fluent in. The in-chat button to translate the messages won’t appear for these exclusions. The list here includes several major world languages, though it misses out on a few, like Hindi.
How to use translation in Telegram
With the translation feature enabled in the app, it just takes a couple of taps to convert your messages in real-time. This is what you need to do:
- In a conversation, tap the message you'd like to translate to open a pop-up menu.
- From the list of options, tap on Translate to let the app automatically identify the message language.
- You’ll see the message translated into English (or whichever default language you use Telegram in).
- Tap on Close Translation when you're done to go back to the chat thread and continue messaging as usual.
Missing features and your privacy
Telegram’s product announcement video shows that the iOS app gives you more options when translating a message. For instance, you can copy the translated text with a single click and even manually change the language from the same window. There’s no such option on the Android app, which gets a rather simplistic translation menu, though you can manually select and copy the translated message using Android’s native text formatting tool.
As for the privacy of your messages, Telegram is using Google’s translation services to provide you with these conversions. That means the message text is sent to Google’s servers, and if there’s any sensitive information shared in your chats, that will also end up there. If that makes you uneasy, be sure to be cautious when translating your messages to avoid giving any third party access to your personal chats unnecessarily.
Telegram has some of the largest topical user groups on any platform, with participants from all across the world. This thoughtful inclusion helps break the language barrier for many and encourages them to connect with more diverse communities. It is one of the utility features that all messaging apps should adopt to make conversations more inclusive and open.
No comments:
Post a Comment