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Google Maps' automatic review translation makes finding a restaurant even easier

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The days of wandering around a new locale looking struggling to find something to eat are long gone. Now, numerous options exist to not only locate a quality meal but to offer up actual choices beyond just grabbing a value meal from the closes fast food joint.

The same applies to points of interest in general, where it’s no longer true that road trips need to involve long hours of boredom punctuated by quick stops in major metropolitan areas. There are many apps and services aimed at providing travel information, and Google Maps has upped its own game lately to include more options and, just recently, the company added the ability to automatically translate reviews so that language becomes less of a barrier.

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Essentially, the newest update is all about making it easier to access reviews in other languages. In the past, users would need to copy and paste reviews from Google Maps into a translation app like Google Translate. Now, Google Maps will automatically translate reviews into your system’s default language.

That way, if you’re looking at the local Russian eatery and see numerous reviews in the Russian language — perhaps a good sign — then you can simply peruse the reviews without any tedium. Just open the listing, and the reviews will be in your native language and ready to read. To clear up any translation quality issues, Google also provides the review in its original language for anyone who wants to clarify a word or two.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Google has spent a good deal of time and effort working to make its Google Maps business listings more accurate and helpful. It’s offered the ability for some time now for users to update business information in addition to adding reviews and ratings. That means that the core business information provided Google Maps is likely to provide a better foundation for the social networking reviews that provides some of the filler.

The new feature also benefits from Google’s ongoing efforts to improve its translation efforts. Machine learning improvements mean that Google Translate offers more accurate and useful translations, and the company is rolling that extra intelligence out to more of the 103 overall languages supported by Google Translate. Today, Google’s neural machine translation is available for nine major languages in total, ranging from English, Spanish, and French to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Now, when you’re out and about, you can check out local businesses no matter where you are and no longer fret about whether or not you speak all of the relevant languages. Just open up Google Maps and start reading reviews in your native language, and check for the “Translated by Google” tag to recognize when you’re getting Google’s version of a translated review.

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Mark Coppock
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