Amazon Alexa and its range of smart devices (smart speakers, smart displays, etc.) do an incredible job in helping users carry out simple daily activities, and in turn, making life smoother for them. These days, they do more than just listen to users give simple voice commands asking for weather updates, turn-by-turn directions, turn on/off lights, or even play songs from Spotify. Your Alexa-powered Echo smart device can now work as your personal translator when you enable the new Alexa Live Translate mode. The feature uses Amazon’s AI-powered speech recognition technology and neural machine translation technology that can recognize multiple languages as they’re spoken.
Languages Supported
Although the Alexa Live translation mode isn’t as robust as the likes of Google (with 27+ languages). Currently, Alexa supports about seven languages: English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese. What this means is, each language can be translated with the other and vice versa. We expect that more languages will be added over time.
Related: Alexa Whisper Mode: How to Enable it on Your Echo Device
How to Use Alexa Live Translation Mode
You can use the Alexa Live Translation mode to translate between two supported languages. For instance, let’s say your Alexa Echo device’s default language is English, you can say “translate Spanish” and will translate anything you say in English to Spanish.
- First, say “Alexa, translate Spanish“
- Once you hear a beep or Alexa’s response, speak for sometime.
- Alexa will detect the language you are using and will say the translation.
- You can continue the conversation when you hear the beep or once the translation stops.
- To end the translation session, simply say “Alexa, Stop“
If you own an Echo Show smart display, you get to see the translation appear in text on the screen. You should keep in mind that Alexa records and stores all translation conversations in the Voice History section of your Alexa app. You can, however, review and delete these conversations at any time, from your Alexa app.