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In a Google Translate community post this week, Google announced that it is now adding offline language functionality to 33 new languages. For anyone traveling abroad and attempting to scrape by and translate on the fly, this is a huge win. Here’s the list of languages:
- Basque
- Cebuano
- Chichewa
- Corsican
- Frisian
- Hausa
- Hawaiian
- Hmong
- Igbo
- Javanese
- Khmer
- Kinyarwanda
- Kurdish
- Lao
- Latin
- Luxembourgish
- Malagasy
- Maori
- Myanmar (Burmese)
- Oriya / Odia
- Samoan
- Scots Gaelic
- Sesotho
- Shona
- Sindhi
- Sundanese
- Tatar
- Turkmen
- Uyghur
- Xhosa
- Yiddish
- Yoruba
- Zulu
Prior to leaving your Wi-Fi connection, you can easily mark an entire language dictionary for offline use by opening the Translate app on your Android device, selecting the language at the bottom of the screen, and then next to “Language”, tapping “Download”.
Any languages you’ve downloaded will be marked as such with a circled check mark. If you’re not on Wi-Fi, you can still download languages, but the process will cost you some cell data and potential carrier charges. To do this, just open Translate, tap “Menu” > “Settings” > “Data usage” > “Downloaded languages”. Of course, Google will ask you to confirm before downloading on a cell connection.
After so long, it’s great to see languages on the list with tens of millions of speakers. If you want to grab the latest version of Google Translate for your device, just use the app badge below, which will lead you to the Google Play Store! Let me know in the comments if you are one to use Translate offline in a foreign country.
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