Messenger is now able to translate messages in English to Spanish and vice versa as part of a new M Translation feature first unveiled during the company's F8 developer conference earlier in May.
Previously, it only worked for chats between customers and merchants in Marketplace. But starting June 21, regular users will now see a "Translate to English/Spanish" module pop up when someone sends a message in either language. Tapping on the module brings up another prompt that asks if the user would like to automatically translate incoming messages moving forward. Just note that each conversation requires an opt-in, and users can opt-out anytime. It's also worth mentioning that both messages — the original and translated — are shown.
For now, the feature is only available in Mexico and the United States.
"This is a meaningful milestone for M Suggestions and will enable people to connect with people they would not be able to communicate with otherwise in a way that is seamless and natural," a spokesperson for Messenger said.
More Languages To Be Added In The Future
Facebook is planning to roll out support for other languages in the future, as Engadget notes, and it's also planning to release it in other countries moving forward. The company believes that with the feature turned on, users from all over the world will be able to interact with each other more seamlessly and naturally.
Facebook M's Shutdown And The Birth Of M Suggestions
M suggestions, on which this new translation feature is based, was first launched in April 2017 and is now available in 11 countries and five languages.
M suggestions was born after Facebook shut down its M-powered personal assistant this past January, a text-based virtual assistant that used human workers to train an AI system. As such, M suggestions doesn't feature human-assisted AI, but it still boasts a number of useful features, including automated suggestions for making payments, sending stickers, crafting plans, and other cool stuff, all of which are facilitated solely within Messenger.
At the time of M's shutdown, Facebook called it an experiment, from which it claims to have learned a lot.
"We're taking these useful insights to power other AI projects at Facebook. We continue to be very pleased with the performance of M suggestions in Messenger, powered by our learnings from this experiment," Facebook said.
Thoughts about Facebook's new M-powered auto-translation feature? Do you think this could outplace Google's own efforts in translation? As always, if you have anything to share, feel free to sound them off in the comments section below!
