Google Translate is testing a revamped UI for its powerful new features (APK teardown)
TL;DR Google is preparing significant UI updates to the Translate app, changing things around to accommodate its upcoming AI-driven features better.
We can spot a new translation results screen, with AI features like Insights, Regional variants, and Ask a question, but the screen no longer highlights the main result immediately.
The upcoming UI's focus on AI raises concerns about the potential loss of user trust due to generative AI inaccuracies.
Google Translate is an excellent app that has saved my day many times. It's dead simple to use, making it very easy to recommend to non-techies. Just like with the rest of its app portfolio, Google has been working to upgrade Google Translate with AI-driven features. It seems the company also intends to use the opportunity to revamp the simplistic UI, for better or worse.
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An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
Google Translate v9.10.70 includes code for a substantial UI change. We managed to activate the upcoming UI to give you an early look before its release.
Current Google Translate UI
Upcoming Google Translate UI
The landing page could receive a small refresh, mainly by adding the upcoming Practice button. When that comes in, the voice input button will shrink a bit in size and move to the right instead of occupying the center position in the row. We also see a bookmarks button at the top for Saved content, alongside the star button for favorites, though both may not co-exist when the bookmarks button does roll out.
Current Google Translate UI
Upcoming Google Translate UI
Current Google Translate UI
Upcoming Google Translate UI
As you can see, the translation results page is on track to get a completely different look. While the current UI highlights the closest translation with a bigger text size, the upcoming UI presents a list of possible translations, with no particular highlights standing out. The autocomplete bar can show up in the upcoming UI, though.
Once you click on a result, the current UI presents that as a highlight, with more clarifying meanings for the word. On the other hand, selecting any result in the upcoming UI marks it as a highlight and presents a slew of AI tools, powered by Gemini of course, in a bottom sheet. These tools include buttons for Alternative translations, Definition, Regional variants, and Ask a question.
Current Google Translate UI
Upcoming Google Translate UI
While 'Alternative translations' and 'Definition' already exist in the current UI, the 'Regional variants' and 'Ask a question' features are new.
When you look up a phrase, the Alternative translations button becomes the Insights button, which gives us more insight into its usage.
Overall, the upcoming UI prepares Google Translate to incorporate AI-driven features meaningfully. However, in the process, the app loses its simplicity, which is something that many of us appreciated about Translate. There's also the disclaimer at the bottom of AI-driven results about how generative AI can make mistakes — we've seen Google Search's AI Overviews give confident yet wrong meaning to gibberish idioms, and we fear the same fate for Google Translate. Leaning too hard into imperfect AI can cause a loss of trust from consumers, and we hope Google has adequately accounted for that with these upcoming changes, if and when they roll out widely.
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