Another Google search option has been made a little more internationally friendly. Back in March, Google Chrome added support for the HTML speech input API. This API enables developers to give web apps and Chrome extensions the ability to transcribe your voice straight to text.
When a web page uses this feature, you simply click on an icon and then speak into your computer’s microphone. The recorded audio is sent to speech servers for transcription, after which the text is typed out for you
Today’s the lucky day we welcome Google Multilingual Voice Search which takes advantage of this API, allowing you to search in multiple languages to your heart’s content.
Currently, it only works with the Google Chrome version 11 browser or the Chromium version 11 browser.
To use the Search-by-Voice feature, click on the microphone icon in the right hand side of the Search Box and start speaking into your computer’s microphone. To change your preferred Search Language just choose from the drop-down list of available Search Languages, this also changes the language of the text that your spoken search terms are transcribed into.
- Supports 45 languages.
- Has “Did you say …?” feature for clarification which offers other possible terms you might have said:
Here is the current list of supported languages:
- Afrikaans
- South African Afrikaans
- Cantonese
- Hong Kong Cantonese
- Chinese
- Hong Kong Chinese
- PRC Chinese
- Taiwan Chinese
- Czech
- Czech Republic Czech
- Dutch
- Netherlands Dutch
- English
- Australian English
- Canadian English
- British English
- Indian English
- New Zealand English
- South African English
- American English
- French
- Belgian French
- Metropolitan French
- Swiss French
- German
- Austrian German
- German
- Liechtenstein German
- Swiss German
- Italian
- Swiss Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- South Korean
- Mandarin
- PRC Mandarin
- Taiwanese Mandarin
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Brazilian Portuguese
- Russian
- Spanish
- Turkish
- Zulu
- South African Zulu
Looks like an awesome toy for us search junkies, what do you think?
