Google Meet’s live translated captions feature is now globally available for eligible Google Workspace users (via Android Central). As Google posted, meeting participants can use the live translated captions feature to translate English meetings into
- French
- German
- Portuguese
- Spanish
However, Google did not specify if the live translated captions tool will be able to translate meetings from these languages back to English.
All meeting participants can use Google Meet’s live translated captions during a meeting if the meeting organizer uses:
- Google Workspace Business Plus
- Google Workspace Enterprise Standard
- Google Workspace Enterprise Plus
- Google Workspace Education Plus
- Teaching & Learning Upgrade
Google also stated that customers enrolled in the beta testing program would also be able to access the live translated captions feature for the next few months until the beta testing program ends.
Google Meet’s live translated captions are available on Google Meet’s web and mobile versions of the service. To enable live captions on the web version of Google Meet during a meeting, go to Settings, then Captions, and then Translated captions. If you use Google Meet on your phone to enable the new live captions feature, navigate to Settings, then Captions, then go to Live Captions. In the Live Captions section, choose Translation Language.
In September 2021, Google announced the beta version of Google Meet’s live translated captions. The idea of the new feature is to increase the efficiency of the meetings by ensuring that all meeting participants absorb the provided information in their own language, which will make the information more understandable. According to Google, live translated captions will help equalize the learning and content sharing between all meeting participants.
The functionality of live translated captions is intended to be particularly beneficial in all-hands meetings or training sessions between international teams. Additionally, live translated captions might also be utilized in schooling. The new Google Meet feature would make it easier for teachers and students speaking different languages to communicate with each other. Thus, the learning process will probably be more efficient as well.