Google Translate Could Be Coming For Duolingo’s Lunch (APK Teardown)
Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Translate is working on a new Practice feature that could help users practice a language.
- We activated the button for the feature when translating between English and Spanish, although the feature itself isn’t functional yet.
- The Practice feature requires microphone access, which suggests the presence of some voice-based activities. It also requires users to sign in, which could be for progress tracking, possibly taking an approach similar to Duolingo.
Google Translate is an excellent app, and frankly, one that I consider a game-changer. It has made communication across languages extremely easy and convenient, taking a big pain point out of international travel and more. However, Google Translate only helps with translating languages and not learning a new one, which is where apps like Duolingo come in with their gamified approach to learning a new language. Google has previously experimented with letting English users practice speaking through Google Search. We’ve now spotted the company working on a Practice feature for Translate that could help users polish their language proficiency with activities.
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An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
Google Translate v9.7.102 includes code for a new “Practice” feature that could help users become more proficient with their selected language. Currently, we could activate the feature only with a limited language pair, namely English and Spanish. It’s possible that Google could add more languages and pairs by the time the feature is ready for rollout.
When the feature rolls out, the main Google Translate landing page will include a new Practice button, possibly highlighted with a beta tag. The Practice feature will let you practice the language with activities, presumably similar to Duolingo’s wildly successful gamified approach. For the English-Spanish pair, we could activate the Practice feature for both languages.
Further, whenever users translate between supported languages, the Practice icon will also show up in the translation results page:
AssembleDebug / Android Authority
Clicking on the Practice button does nothing now as the feature is not functional. It attempts to open a web page within the app, which is currently invalid and does not load. Here’s a demo of the feature in action so far:
According to strings found within the app, users will need to sign in and allow microphone access to use the Practice feature, which suggests that progress could be tracked and that some activities could involve voice-based tasks.
Google has not yet shared any details about this Practice feature. More work must be done before the feature becomes fully functional and supports more languages. As such, the feature could take a while to roll out to users. We’ll keep you updated when we learn more.
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