xda-developers where I am marked as Recognized Developer/Contributor just released a post about new Android 12 feature.
I’m always tend to think positive, but tell me should we worry about new auto translation feature or no?
As I can see framework will translate any 3rd app into a native language of the user.
We still don’t know if this will be automated, so it may only be an API for 3rd party translation services. It would, in fact, can be beneficial for us as we wouldn’t need all the magic behind our Gradle plugin to perform OTA updates.
Automated translations will always rely on MT engines, and it’s not going to be perfect, so I bet that many apps are still rather using user/native/professional-level translations.
Also, with automated translations, you would probably lose an option to manage them on your own. You may no longer be able to control how things are translated, and if something is confusing for your users, you may need, at some point, to retain control and introduce some management platform.
I remember all the problems I had with Japanese and how people were angry because of the low-quality translation (and a human translated it!). So, this may also harm your apps. At the moment, if Google Translate powers this, I’m not interested in using it in my apps.
However, such technology could make more developers aware of how localization is essential and think about it.