When you’re travelling abroad, you can’t be confident of a reliable internet connection. Wi-Fi networks may not be available in all places and roaming data can be very expensive. Still, you’re most likely to need a tool on your phone like Google Translate when you’re abroad. Helpfully, Google offers a range of offline translation libraries that you can download in the Google Translate app.
These offline translation libraries carry all the resources your phone needs to translate one language to another. Installing an offline language library will allow your device to translate even when it doesn’t have a data connection.
To download an offline translation library, you need to open the Google Translate app. Once in the app, tap the burger menu icon in the top-left corner.
Tip: It’s recommended that you download the offline translation libraries you want before you travel, so you can use your existing data connections and allowances.
Next, you need to tap “Offline translation”, to view the list of translation libraries.
Tap on a language from the list, to see the size of the library and how much space your device has. If you’re sure you want to download the offline translation library, tap download.
Some translation libraries will display two languages. These are specifically for translations between the two languages and are primarily focussed on improving instant camera translations. You will need the offline translation libraries for both languages as well.
Downloaded language libraries will be shown at the top of the language list. if you want to delete a library from your device, tap the bin icon on the right, then tap “Remove” when prompted.
Tip: Google Translate will prefer to use online translations over offline ones, even if you have the offline library installed and have a poor internet connection. This can incur unexpected data costs when data roaming abroad if you’re not careful. To force Google Translate to use the offline translation library, disable all network connections on your device.
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