Google Translate will get a new feature before long that will enable it to translate people’s speech into another language and then transcribe it in real time.

“Your mobile phone effectively turns into a language translator for long-form speech,” Sami Iqran (pictured), product manager for Google Translate, told SiliconANGLE in an interview at a press event Wednesday in San Francisco.

The new feature is currently still under development, but Google officials said they hope to make it available to Android device users in a few months. Iqran said Google still needs to iron out some issues, in particular filtering out noise to make the translation work better.

The new feature, which also will enable the transcription to be saved as a text file, will require an internet connection to use it. That’s because it needs enough processing power both to translate and to render speech into a text form, and many devices simply aren’t powerful enough. Transcription from speech in real time is not easy because the app needs to interpret both the cadence of the speech and any pauses, and also add punctuation where needed.

For starters, the real-time transcription feature will only work with speech that’s captured by the phone’s microphone, though Google said it hopes to add the ability to transcribe prerecorded audio files at a later date.

Google said the transcribed speech would become more accurate over time as the app’s algorithms learn and improve from regular use. It envisions people using the feature at events such as conferences and lectures, for example.

The feature sounds a bit similar to the Live Transcribe app on Android, which is aimed at the hearing-impaired and allows them to see a transcription of people’s speech on their smartphones. However, that app cannot translate speech into another language.

With reporting from Robert Hof

Photo: Google