Now, Alexa can act as interpreter with new Live Translation feature

Amazon has launched Live Translation feature for Alexa which allows users speaking in two different languages to converse with each other.

The feature enables individuals speaking two different languages to talk to each other with Alexa acting as an interpreter. Alexa will translate both parts of the conversation live with the new feature.

“With this new feature, a customer can ask Alexa to initiate a translation session for a pair of languages. Once the session has commenced, customers can speak phrases or sentences in either languages. Alexa will automatically identify which language is being spoken and translate each side of the conversation,” Amazon explained in a blog post.

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The feature will work with six pairs of languages at launch ― English and Spanish, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, or Hindi.

The feature will currently work only on Echo devices with locale set to English US, Amazon said.

The Live Translation feature uses Amazon’s existing systems, including Alexa’s automatic-speech-recognition (ASR) system, Amazon Translate, and Alexa’s text-to-speech system. The overall architecture and machine learning models have been “designed and optimised for conversational-speech translation,” the company said.

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Users can start using Live Translation on an Echo device with a voice command, according to a TechCrunch report.

For instance, a user can initiate live translation with a command such as “Alexa, translate Hindi”. Alexa will then begin translating between English and Hindi.

Users can also see the live translation apart from hearing it on Echo Show devices. They can end a translation session with the command “Alexa, stop”.