Google Translate now works inside apps on Android Marshmallow

Google Translate app
Start your translation engines.

Translating words and phrases on Android is about to get a lot easier: Google has announced that it's integrating translation features into individual apps with the roll-out of Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

When Marshmallow arrives on your phone - or if you're buying one of the new Nexus devices with it preinstalled - all you then need to do is install Google Translate on your handset and you can access translation options from inside your favourite apps.

Whether a particular app supports the feature depends on its developer, but Google says it's made the integration very easy to add. Apps like TripAdvisor, WhatsApp and LinkedIn are already on board, Google says.

Talk like a native

Presumably all of Google's own apps will soon be updated to access this tool in Marshmallow as well. According to Google's GIF-laden blog post, you simply tap the button to the side of the usual cut and copy options when text is selected on screen.

Whether you want to browse Twitter in a foreign language or make sense of what your Spanish cousins are trying to say, the new capabilities should come in handy in a host of different situations. 90 languages are supported from the off, Google says.

"More than 500 million people translate over 100 billion words a day on Google Translate," writes Barak Turovsky from the Google Translate team. "With updates like this one, plus features like conversation mode and instant camera translation, we're making Translate available anywhere you need it."

David Nield
Freelance Contributor

Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.