Android is undoubtedly the most popular mobile operating system right now. With more than 2.5 billion users worldwide, Android will surely dominate the mobile landscape in the coming years.
Despite having more than 70% market share, Android struggles with various issues ranging from update fragmentation to security updates.
While Android itself supports a wide range of languages, a whole lot of small application developers do not have the time and resources required to make the necessary translations. Even though large companies do translate their apps with the help of professional translators, individual or indie developers cannot afford the same.
The best they can do is ask volunteers to do the same or make use of existing translation services. Having said that, Android 12 might change all this, with reports suggesting that Google is currently working on a framework that lets Android automatically translate the UI to the user-selected language.
While tearing down an APK usually can accurately predict upcoming features, some of the features do get dropped in upcoming versions. Some people at XDA developers gained access to an Android 12 build with some new features and a couple of new UI changes.
Coming to the new translation features, Google added two new permissions to the current build of Android 12 – BIND_TRANSLATION_SERVICE and MANAGE_UI_TRANSLATION. If we take a look at the changes made in Android 10, Google added “Roles” and might use the Roles feature and add “Translator” as a role.
You can automatically translate the text within screenshots or the entire recent panel using Google Lens. Third-party apps offer full auto-translation features for years using the Xposed Framework. Google can make use of the idea and implement it natively in the Android OS, making it accessible for millions and billions of users worldwide.
However, the addition of the new auto-translation feature should be taken with a grain of salt, since developers haven’t seen the feature in action. Until it is released, we are still unsure if it will make it in the upcoming version of Android.
