Chrome may soon give you translate options for selected text

Google Translate as a product is a great example of how artificial intelligence and deep learning models can enrich our lives. It powers much of our current technology, and many depend on it for everyday life. Soon, it may receive an update that will take its helpfulness even further.

As spotted by u/Leopeva64-2 on Reddit, Chrome looks to be readying a “Partial Translate” feature which allows you to select text on the browser and translate only what you selected. This can be extremely helpful if you do not need the entire page translated or if the page contains multiple languages. As 9to5Google explained, today’s built-in translation in Chrome applies to the page as a whole, rather than just bits on the page.

With this new feature, you’ll be able to translate just the portions you want. Furthermore, you will be able to easily switch between languages without having to dig into your settings to add them, as there will be a drop-down available to switch between the detected language and a scrollable list of many others to choose from.

The feature has been in development since March when the entry appeared in the Chromium Gerrit. However, this is a feature that other browsers, like Microsoft Edge, have had for some time now. Additionally, while it is live right now in Chrome Canary, it is still missing the piece where it translates the text, so it is not fully fleshed out. Nevertheless, we expect that when this feature makes it to the stable version of the browser, it will be used quite a bit, particularly by those who need more than one language translated in their lives.