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Google, the search engine giant, has launched a new live translation app that can take audio in one language and translate into a second language using a synthesized voice in real time.
The new app can be used with iOS or Android and will roll out sometime in the next couple a days, said a blog post on Google.
The app is able to translate up to 80 languages and no active internet connection is required.
In a blog post, Google wrote that when talking with a person in a language that is not familiar conversations can go very slow.
Beginning today, a simple tap of the microphone then speaking in a language that was selected followed by a tap on the mic again and the Google app will recognize which language of the two are being spoken allowing for a smoother and more fluid overall conversation.
The blog post continued by saying that for the remainder of that conversation, the mic does not need to be tapped.
Therefore, asking for directions, ordering food or chatting with friend in a different language just became much faster and easier.
Skype, which Microsoft now owns, beat the search engine behemoth to the translate announcement by a couple of weeks when it announced it would launch new software that would convert spoken English and Spanish.
This does not offer the same number of languages the new Google app does, but it already is going through a testing phase by the public.
The Skype Translator Preview works only on a desktop and currently is limited to a test program. Skype says the translator gives the user the ability to speak a new language without needing to learn it and that sometime soon more languages are to be added.
Google has claimed that it now has 500 million users of its service for translating across the different platforms that it is available on.
Google estimates as much as 90% of the entire content on the Internet is in only 10 languages.
