Slowing Down Translate
This morning, I was looking up how to say “Good morning” in Mandarin with my daughter. I had heard my Google Home pronounce it but I wanted to read the transliteration. I went over the Google Translate and pressed the speech button (the speaker icon). It spoke out the pronunciation. I couldn’t quite pick up what it said, so I pressed it again.
That was odd… was I going crazy?
I pressed once, listened. Pressed again, listened. What was different?
The second time you press to listen to the pronunciation, Google slows down the TTS so it’s easier to follow along.
This is a very small and relatively easy UI build but it’s very smart! Kudos to the person or people on the Google Translate team who thought to implement this. If people are trying to listen multiple times, it probably means they’re having trouble making out the word. Better to make it easier by slowing things down.
This made me pause and reflect… where else in our offerings can we make these small intuitive changes?
