Google Voice Actions now available in select European languages

Google Voice Actions has been a killer app for Android for just over a year now, and should be one of your favorite apps if you're an Android user. The app allows you to use voice commands to do various tasks, and now it's available in 5 new languages.

Until now, Voice Actions have only been available to those of us lucky enough to speak English with an American accent, but a new update is bringing support for British English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian. So, now users around Europe (and really anywhere in the world who may speak one of those languages) can use Google Voice Actions on any Android 2.2+ devices.

Voice Actions allow you to: send texts/e-mails, web search, maps search, call contacts or Places, open website, and get directions or navigation. It is available for free in the Android Market.

source: Google Mobile blog

7 Comments

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posted on 16 Sep 2011, 13:38

1. joaolx (Posts: 364; Member since: 16 Aug 2011)

What about Portuguese?

posted on 16 Sep 2011, 14:16

2. henk-jan (unregistered)

And what about dutch?

posted on 17 Sep 2011, 14:04

3. Goldeneye (Posts: 419; Member since: 22 Jan 2011)

The article says "select" languages and it looks to me that Google is going with the most important first, be patient

posted on 17 Sep 2011, 15:28

4. blackcherry (unregistered)

sounds pretty nice, but what abt speaking one of these languages but writing a sms in another one? do you have to install each language then or will the program be smart enough to do what u want?

posted on 18 Sep 2011, 00:43 1

5. MichaelHeller (Posts: 2707; Member since: 26 May 2011)

Since the language recognition is actually done in the cloud, I'd assume the one app would work for all languages, but I haven't tested that theory because I'm a useless American who can't speak any other languages.

posted on 18 Sep 2011, 09:57

6. protozeloz (Posts: 5396; Member since: 16 Sep 2010)

I LOLed, well I tried and depends on so many things, if you are using the voice commands to completely do the message then you gonna need to use the same language, if you are on your keyboard then the language at the bottom on the space bar (add more languages on the settings) its going to make the typing on that language, if you use keyboards like swifkey that accept various languages then it recognizes both, I personally just decided to use vlingo for Spanish and Google voice for English commands and system default.

already plan on submitting an idea where people say certain keyword for for the system on their servers to understand one is a command in English and the other is a message in Spanish

my idea is quite simple:

1.press voice command key
2. say command on default language "like send text to"
3. ask for a language changes with words like "text in Spanish"
4. say your Spanish message

system just need to check for a keyword to understand the next couple of words are in Spanish

posted on 18 Sep 2011, 11:57

7. protozeloz (Posts: 5396; Member since: 16 Sep 2010)

Edit : seems to be working when I use Spanish as text but some words might come in English