WhatsApp Can Now Translate Your Messages

[Erica Ho]

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Image Caption | Source: Image Credits
Erica Ho / Map Happy | Source: A quick translation on WhatsApp from Spanish to English.

No more need to copy and paste into Google Translate, WhatsApp has recently rolled out the ability to translate messages directly in the app.

Given how international and pervasive WhatsApp is, this is a a long overdue and a much needed feature. It is also possible to earmark an entire conversation for translation (this feature is only available in Android).

Here is the official post, outlining the key features:

If you see a message in a different language, you can now simply long-press and tap 'Translate'. Choose the language you want the message to be translated from or to, and download it to be saved for future translations. This works for 1:1 chats, groups, and Channel updates too.

Android users will also be able to choose to turn on automatic translation for an entire chat thread, so that all future incoming messages in that conversation are translated as well.

Message translations were designed to protect the privacy of your chats. That's why translations occur on your device where WhatsApp cannot see them.

In order to enable the feature on WhatsApp, a language library does need to be downloaded, though this doesn't take long.

It doesn't matter whether you choose to translate an incoming or outgoing message. Each message will indicate that it has been translated, and even better, translations can be removed (so it's not permanent).

In order to stop the translation of all incoming messages, the only way to stop it is to translate a new message, deselect the option, and remove the translation afterwards. That process is a bit clunky, but is what it is.

(FYI, the translations may depend on grammar! Definitely double check to see it is translating things correctly. Also, you're kinda missing out on a prime opportunity to learn another language.)

Here is a quick video of it in action, and how to remove the translations.



On Android, this is supported across six languages. On iOS, 19 languages are supported.

Here are the supported languages on different platforms:

Android: English, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, and Arabic
iOS: Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.​

Obviously, there will be more language support to follow!