Struggling to read messages in foreign languages? Soon, you won’t have to copy WhatsApp chats and paste them into Google Translate or other translation tools.
According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp has been working on a built-in translation feature for chats and channel updates since last year. Right now, it’s available to some beta testers using WhatsApp for Android (version 2.25.12.25), with plans to roll it out to more beta users in the coming weeks.
The feature supports Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Hindi, and Russian. Since translations happen on your phone (no internet needed), you’ll have to download a language pack for the specific language you want to translate.
There’s also an option to download a pack that auto-detects the incoming message’s language and translates it for you.
To turn on translations, just go to the chat info screen and pick which language you want messages to be translated from. You can set this up for individual or group chats. If you’d rather translate messages manually, you can do that too—just tap and hold a message, then hit “Translate.”
Keep in mind, WhatsApp’s translations might not be as precise as cloud-based services like Google Translate since it uses smaller on-device language packs. But if a translation seems off, you can send feedback to help improve it—without WhatsApp or Meta seeing the original or translated message.