Salut! Willkommen! Benvenuto! ¡Bienvenido! Google Search by Voice in French, German, Italian and Spanish
Wednesday, June 9, 2010 | 3:37 AM
Here’s a test for the German speakers out there: which is faster...saying Geschwindigkeitsbeschränkung (German for speed limit), or typing the same query character-by-character?
Voice has always been the most natural way to interact with a phone -- speaking is typically faster and easier than typing. We first developed Search by voice for English, and then for Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. Today we’re excited to welcome speakers of French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Images of Google Search by Voice in Italian (Android), German (iPhone), Spanish (BlackBerry)
Our goal is to bring Google Search by voice to speakers of all languages. We follow a rigorous process to add each new language or dialect. Working directly with native speakers in each country, we spend weeks collecting spoken utterances to create the specific models which power the service. Our helpers are asked to read popular queries in their native tongue, in a variety of acoustic conditions such as in restaurants, out on busy streets, and inside cars. We also construct, for each language, a vocabulary of over one million recognizable words. It’s no small feat, but we love doing it.
Note that our new language models are designed for accents from Spain, France, Italy, and Germany. If you speak one of the new languages with another accent (for example, German in Austria, French in Switzerland, or Spanish in Mexico), Search by voice may not work so well for you.
How you get started with Google Search by voice depends on what kind of phone you have. If your phone runs Android 2.1 or later, and you have the Quick Search Box installed, all you have to do is tap the microphone icon to start a voice-powered search. iPhone and BlackBerry users who already have Google Mobile App installed can enable voice search by selecting the new languages from the settings panel within the app.
If you have Android 1.6 or 2.1 (Donut or Eclair), and you have already installed the Search by voice application, starting later today voice search will return recognition results for French, German, Italian or Spanish if your phone has one of those languages chosen in ‘Language and keyboard’ settings. If you do not have the Search by voice application, you can install it from Android Market on your phone - search for ‘voice search‘. This application is only available in the Android Markets for France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
To get Google Mobile App for iPhone, search for ‘Google Mobile App’ in the App Store or follow this link. BlackBerry and Nokia S60 users should visit m.google.com using their phone’s browser.
Learn more at http://mobile.google.com and select your country in the footer.
So if you speak French, Italian, German, Spanish, grab your phone and bid Google Search by voice a hearty Salut! Willkommen! Benvenuto! ¡Bienvenido!
Labels: google search app, google search by voice, Mobile Blog, quick search box
50 comments:
Mattia said...
"This application is only available in the Android Markets for France, Germany, Italy and Spain."
Hey Google! What about Switzerland? We speak 3 of these languages here!
June 9, 2010 at 3:49 AM
Marc said...
Nice! I hope Dutch and Flemish are next on the list ;-)
June 9, 2010 at 3:52 AM
Anonymous said...
Hey! Where's Luxembourg???
June 9, 2010 at 4:13 AM
medo said...
Having more languages is always welcome. BUT fix the English one first. The speech recognition SUCKS. It's UNUSABLE. Dragon speech recognition is way better (accuracy and continuous dictation). I am very disappointed with google voice recognition. (HTC Desire 2.1)
June 9, 2010 at 4:23 AM
Unknown said...
Merci, Gracias, Thank You Mr Google !
June 9, 2010 at 4:24 AM
Leo said...
Hey there binarylooks, I read somewhere that Luxembourg is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany; having a population of over half a million people in about 2,586 square kilometres. Sounds lovely.
The city of Luxembourg, the capital and largest city, (who knew? did you?) is the seat of several institutions and agencies of the European Union. Interesting. I may be lucky and visit it one day. Yeah. Bless you.
June 9, 2010 at 4:29 AM
Carles said...
any plans to offer Google Mobile App for iPhone?
Apple should accept a cool app like that in his app store... ;)
thanks
June 9, 2010 at 4:51 AM
Unknown said...
I'm in France, I'm on Nokia E71, I downloaded Google mobile app a few times, but nothing, I don't have the other languages... Too soon may be?
June 9, 2010 at 4:53 AM
Anonymous said...
@tdad - please try downloading it now, you were a little too quick off the mark for us earlier, apologies for the delay.
Robert, Product Manager for Google Mobile App
June 9, 2010 at 5:22 AM
Unknown said...
Great day!
But make it available in the Android Market in AUSTRIA. We also speak German - there's no reason for not bringing voice search to Austria!
*please*
June 9, 2010 at 5:32 AM
anhdres said...
I'm in Argentina and I don't see any option to turn this on or update something to enable it.
We speak spanish too(not the purest form by any means, but it would be fun to try!)
June 9, 2010 at 5:43 AM
teknolog said...
Could we at some point stop using the deprecated term "Nokia S60" and start using "Symbian" instead? It's not only for Nokia phones anymore.
June 9, 2010 at 5:46 AM
Unknown said...
Hi there,
I'm using a Nexus one with Android 2.1 (in France). First of all, it was not at all clear to me that I have to download another application since the search box (voice search) is already part of my homescreen and some techsites wrote there will be an update available for that. However, finally I found the "Search by voice" application in the market(which is supposed to be installed by default). Now I have two voice search apps and each time I start Voice search it asks me whether I want to use Voice Search "com.google.android.voicesearch" or "com.google.android.voicesearch.x"!!
How am I supposed to know, which one is the right voice search application? There should be only one single application! Thats so disturbing! However, I tested both for a while in German and French and for the moment I can't even say, which one is the right one, since both do not seem to work!
I would appreciate any comment on this. Especially how I can uninstall the "old" Voice Search and get the "new" one working.
Best regards
Sebastian
June 9, 2010 at 6:04 AM
Christian said...
Hey Google - what about Austria! We speak german too....
I hate those silly market restrictions... what about German/French/... speaking people living in another country?!
June 9, 2010 at 6:07 AM
Unknown said...
Not sure how to use this since I have my Android set to English. Does it understand German words like street names in English at all? How is this supposed to work?
June 9, 2010 at 6:35 AM
Jorge Salvador said...
I'm a Spanish user of a HTC Legend device, with Android 2.1, and it's not clear *at all* what do I have to do to be able to use this. For the life of me I cannot find the app on the market nor use the quick search via voice.
I consider myself not "tech dumb" by no means, but this is just confusing, and I have to say this is becoming the norm with my Android device. That is reading that I can do something to find out later that I can't, or that is a cumbersome method involved to get it.
June 9, 2010 at 6:46 AM
BennyInc said...
I would really really highly appreciate a way to leave my Nexus set to English, but the Search by Voice to recognize German - is there a way to set this separately?
June 9, 2010 at 6:55 AM
Unknown said...
I am also looking for a way to Search by Voice in German while using my Nexus One with US English as the default language.
Is there a way to allow the recognition of multiple languages, or to *easily* switch between them both? Switching the OS Locale is NOT a viable option!
June 9, 2010 at 7:12 AM
Paolo Amoroso said...
What's the exact name of the search by voice app for Android 1.6? "Voice search"? I'm in Italy and I can't currently find it in Android Market.
June 9, 2010 at 7:15 AM
Unknown said...
Hot do I enable this on a German HTC Desire?
June 9, 2010 at 7:49 AM
mario said...
Google Maps works just fine with the new voice search on my nokia 5800 but the search app is missing from m.google.com?
no support for symbian touch?
June 9, 2010 at 7:54 AM
Unknown said...
Paolo Amoroso said...
What's the exact name of the search by voice app for Android 1.6? "Voice search"? I'm in Italy and I can't currently find it in Android Market.
Ricerca Vocale
June 9, 2010 at 8:01 AM
Paolo Amoroso said...
VeNoMiS: Ricerca Vocale is indeed the right app for Android 1.6, thanks.
But it turn out that my phone carrier, vodafone Italia, apparently blocks Ricerca Vocale's data traffic because it is considered some sort of VoIP traffic:
http://lab.vodafone.it/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13965
This is a bit weird, given than Google and vodafone Italia are partners for the distribution of my Google branded HTC Magic.
June 9, 2010 at 9:03 AM
Unknown said...
What about us in Canada, you cover English and now French...What gives?!?!?!?!?!
June 9, 2010 at 9:18 AM
Unknown said...
What about people who speak those languages yet live somewhere else? I'm in the US but speak French, will I not get this option?
June 9, 2010 at 10:55 AM
Simon said...
NORWEGIAN! Please?
June 9, 2010 at 12:43 PM
Unknown said...
What about spanish for Mexico or spanish for Latin America? There's a huge market for this language.
June 9, 2010 at 12:56 PM
M said...
The request for *easy* language switch on all phones (incl. HTC sense) is seconded.
Very irksome when typing with correction and looking for a foreign-language word on wikipedia, google...
Language switch in google translate should switch speech recognition accordingly. Then it would finally be the killer app it has the potential to be.
June 9, 2010 at 12:57 PM
Carlo said...
I don't know about this news...I have google mobile app already installed on my iphone, however THERE IS NO UPDATE in the appstore and also THERE ARE NO NEW LANGUAGES in the software settings...so, is this true or FAKE?!?!?!
June 9, 2010 at 1:07 PM
David said...
on the iphone works perfectly in Italian! Fantastic!
June 9, 2010 at 1:20 PM
fedrocraic said...
Vodafone Italia, your only career in Italy, blocks Google Search by Voice under umts! You can use this app only in wi-fi...
We are bored!
First we didn't find original headphone in the box.In this days it is impossible to buy N1 in the shop or in the web site;
and now this terrible story...
it's inconceivable!
June 9, 2010 at 1:22 PM
Unknown said...
Ca marche parfaitement sur mon HTC Magic 1.6 !
Google Market "Recherche vocale", réinstaller le widget pour voir le petit micro. Et ça fonctionne aussi dans Google Map.
June 9, 2010 at 1:27 PM
Daniel Serodio said...
Brazilian Portuguese ?
June 9, 2010 at 1:43 PM
Anonymous said...
Works very well! Dankeschön!
June 9, 2010 at 4:47 PM
Anonymous said...
Why do we not serve other French, German, Italian and Spanish speaking countries? Because speech recognition technology is sensitive to dialects and because search queries vary by country. We need to do some more work before we launch in Austria, Belgium, Chile etc. But we'll get there soon.
June 9, 2010 at 7:59 PM
ilarrain said...
@Amico: That's weird. I'm in Chile and can search in "American English", "Indian English", etc., even "Mandarin" or "Japanese", but can't search in "Spanish Spanish"? Our spanish dialect it's certainly more alike than the mandarin one.
June 10, 2010 at 12:19 AM
Christian said...
Google -- i live in Austria and I speak "german" meaning "german" - no dialect, no hassles.
Come on - talk to you're "native speakers" and let the users decide whether they feel themself able to speak a language or not. You can do a pop up if you want informing users that results may vary depening on the "dialect". But disabling it at all is odd.
That said i would appreciate an option to enable german voice search while leaving my phone language set to english.
June 10, 2010 at 3:28 AM
Unknown said...
Mario said: "Google Maps works just fine with the new voice search on my nokia 5800 but the search app is missing from m.google.com?"
I have the same question: ¿No Search App for Nokia 5800?
Thank you in advance.
June 10, 2010 at 4:57 AM
Unknown said...
I forgot to mention that i'm in Spain.
June 10, 2010 at 5:04 AM
Unknown said...
No Download available. Nokia 5800, Italy.
Thx for developing btw.
June 10, 2010 at 5:22 AM
Anonymous said...
@Jorge If your locale is set to Spain the Android 2.1 should work. Try pressing and holding the search key. See if it brings Search by voice
June 10, 2010 at 5:11 PM
Anonymous said...
@paulo amoroso - Look for Ricerca vocale in Market
June 10, 2010 at 5:12 PM
Paolo Amoroso said...
Vodafone fixed the issue and now Italian Voice Search works fine. It was a misconfiguration by the carrier, not a block of the service.
June 11, 2010 at 2:20 AM
Unknown said...
Hi Google Team,
please open the Voice search also for Austrian (and of course Swiss) users.The dialect won´t be the real problem, because there are also different dialects within Germany.
Please also open the Voice search to devices which use Android System below 2.1.
As far as I know the Voice search was available on english devices having 1.6 or lower.
So please for 1.6 and Austria (and Switzerland) :)
thanks
June 11, 2010 at 4:33 AM
ranjanjan said...
en español "busqueda por voz"
June 11, 2010 at 4:54 AM
Imam Student Activity said...
the Arabic language ?
we want Arabic :)
June 11, 2010 at 12:06 PM
Anonymous said...
@ Imam Student Activity
Inshallah
June 12, 2010 at 7:21 AM
olivier said...
it's unfortunate that the search language is set to the phone's language.
i live in france but i always set my phone language to english, yet i want to be able to do voice search in french. so i guess i'll have to change my phone language and live with the moronic french comments in the android market and the poorly translated apps...
actually i'd like to be able to search in any language. i don't know if the android UI supports this but being able to create a home screen shortcut for some language and another shortcut for another language would be nice.
June 15, 2010 at 2:18 AM
Steven Van Vaerenbergh said...
I live in Spain but talk to my phone either in English, Spanish or some other language, depending on the context. I haven't tried Search by Voice yet, but it seems I would need to change my phone settings each time I want to speak another language. That's not very useful.
June 15, 2010 at 3:39 AM
Anonymous said...
@ Steven @Olivier
Both of you raise valuable points. Indeed we are working on providing a solution that would address your concerns. I expect to make progress on this in the near future. Of course, I cannot provide the specifics until we make the announcement. :)
June 15, 2010 at 3:40 PM
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