Google has announced a closer integration between two of their services, Google Maps and Google translate that enables users to access Translates text-to-speech technology directly within the Maps app. This will improve the accessibility of users using maps when travelling in a foreign country with lesser clicks.
The translator feature in maps will now enable phones to speak out a place’s name and address in the local language. When the user clicks the new speaker button next to the place name or address, Google Maps will use Translate and say it out loud. There will also be a shortcut to switch to Translate if the user wants to have a deeper conversation.
The Text to speech technology in Google Translate will automatically detect the default language of the phone and the local language of the place the user is searching for and provide a real time translation of the address.
This new feature will be available this month on both iOS and Android and will initially support 50 languages with more languages coming soon.