Talk across the table

Talk is for two people who do not share a language: you speak in yours, the other person reads or hears it in theirs, and answers the same way. Both directions run on the one device between you, with the same engine and checks as Translate.

Setting it up

Pick the two languages, one per side. The screen splits so each side reads its own language the right way up on a phone laid on the table. Each side has its own microphone button. One side speaks at a time: while a turn is being translated, the other microphone waits, because two open microphones on one device feed back into each other.

Speaking

Press the microphone, speak, and release. The recognised sentence appears on your side, its translation on the other, and the status line narrates the translation like everywhere else. Dictation uses your browser's or system's speech recognition; that part is theirs, not ours, and on most browsers it means the audio is processed by the browser vendor. Where an on-device voice model is offered in Settings, installing it keeps recognition local as well. The speaker button reads the translation aloud with the system voice, which is local.

The transcript

The conversation stays on screen as a transcript, both languages, in order, for the length of the session (the last two hundred turns). It is not saved and not sent anywhere; leaving the page ends it. For a sentence you need to keep, use Translate, which records to History.

Does the other person need the app?

No. One device, one screen, two languages.

Can I use it offline?

Translation, yes, once the language pack is installed. Dictation depends on the speech recognition your device provides; an installed on-device voice model works offline too.