ChromeOS 106 gaining the ability to translate highlighted text to other languages on the fly

In Google Chrome, you can already right-click anywhere on a web page to select “Translate to English”, and automagically convert the entire site from a foreign language to English. However, there is no way to simply highlight a bit of text and translate it. Well, that is until ChromeOS 106.

Kevin Tofel of About Chromebooks reports that with the latest OS update, this is very much possible, and goes on to demonstrate it as seen below. In fact, while you do “Translate to English” (really, this is whatever your system language is set to), a pop-up appears at the top of the page allowing you to translate the selected text to any language you choose from the dropdown list.

Enables the Partial Translate feature on Desktop, which allows users to translate text selections on the page through the right-click context menu.

chrome://flags#desktop-partial-translate

The most awesome part about this entire thing is that whatever it is you select and translate – let’s say into Japanese as he’s demonstrated – it will appear in the newly chosen language in real-time on the web page. There’s no pop-up box needed, even though such a box does appear to give you further options. All language options are sourced from Google Translate, naturally.

While I can’t say for sure who else would use a partial translation feature in Chrome or ChromeOS as opposed to translating an entire webpage, I will say that as a language learner myself, this comes in clutch. Being able to see words and sentences in Japanese on the fly to practice a bit via Translate isn’t as accurate as my other resources, it is a really neat little addition that can certainly help me on the way to fluency.