Meta-owned WhatsApp has announced that the personal messaging app will allow users to instantly translate their messages. The new feature is being rolled out to WhatsApp’s iOS and Android apps and will be available in all 180 countries that the app supports.
Android users will be able to translate between six languages: English, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, and Arabic. Meanwhile, iOS users get support for over 19+ languages—all the languages supported by Apple’s Translate app.
The supported languages on iPhone include:
- Arabic
- Dutch
- English
- French
- German
- Hindi
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Mandarin Chinese
- Polish
- Portuguese (Brazil)
- Russian
- Spanish
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Vietnamese
How to translate a message on WhatsApp?
In order to translate a message on WhatsApp, just long-press it and tap on the three dots in the top-right corner, then click on ‘Translate’. Choose your desired language from the ensuing menu, and your message will be translated instantly.
The feature works for 1:1 chats, groups, and Channel updates. Similar to other features on the app, WhatsApp won’t have access to the user’s chat, and the translation will occur on the device, with users being asked to download a language pack for each language they want to translate to and from.
For Android users, WhatsApp will provide the option to turn on automatic translation for an entire chat thread, where all future incoming messages in the conversation will be translated as well.
While the feature is being rolled out to Android and iOS-powered devices, it isn’t yet clear when it will make its way to the Windows and Web versions of the app.
A support page on using the new translate feature reads, “Translating messages on WhatsApp is only available on certain devices and may not be available to you yet. In the meantime, we recommend keeping WhatsApp updated on your device so you can get the feature as soon as it’s available.”
