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Posting from the other thread here too... The "translate conversations in real-time" part seems to have nothing to do with the Google Pixel Buds - it's already

Posting from the other thread here too... The "translate conversations in real-time" part seems to have nothing to do with the Google Pixel Buds - it's already live in the Google Translate app. In fact, you can try it right now. Open the Google Translate app on android, put on a pair of headphones with a mic, and tap the audio translation. As you hear spoken word in another language, it'll translate in realtime back to your non-google headphones. *note - The trick is you need to press the button so it enables translation across both languages, as that seems to be the only way to keep translation on even after the first phrase.

dlubarov 9y ago
Google engineer here. Did you see the demo? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc28VzAFBHw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc28VzAFBHw Yes, the Google Translate app has a conversation mode which doesn't require a headset at all. I wouldn't recommend trying to use it with an unsupported headset, though. You won't be able to do push-to-talk, and the audio routing won't work as intended. (The intended UX is that one side of the conversation is routed to the phone, the other to Pixel Buds.) I wrote about why we decided not to support third party headsets here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404918
- hackerews 9y ago
  That's cool. I still think the primary issue is the marketing makes it sound like the ear buds are bringing new tech to make this experience possible, when they're really bringing: a) UX for "hold while talking" b) Known quality of the headset From the outside, it looks a bit shady, and a bit un-Googlelike just to compete with Apple. I imagine a more Google-like approach would've been to release Translate as a local model (eg like https://developers.google.com/vision/ https://developers.google.com/vision/). It's easy to imagine the community would quickly figure out a way to solve a) and make the experience work for most headsets.

dlubarov 9y ago

Google engineer here. Did you see the demo? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc28VzAFBHw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc28VzAFBHw Yes, the Google Translate app has a conversation mode which doesn't require a headset at all. I wouldn't recommend trying to use it with an unsupported headset, though. You won't be able to do push-to-talk, and the audio routing won't work as intended. (The intended UX is that one side of the conversation is routed to the phone, the other to Pixel Buds.) I wrote about why we decided not to support third party headsets here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404918

hackerews 9y ago
That's cool. I still think the primary issue is the marketing makes it sound like the ear buds are bringing new tech to make this experience possible, when they're really bringing: a) UX for "hold while talking" b) Known quality of the headset From the outside, it looks a bit shady, and a bit un-Googlelike just to compete with Apple. I imagine a more Google-like approach would've been to release Translate as a local model (eg like https://developers.google.com/vision/ https://developers.google.com/vision/). It's easy to imagine the community would quickly figure out a way to solve a) and make the experience work for most headsets.