Google's voice assistant not only allows us to get information and operation functions by moving our mouth, but also is a good helper for many visually impaired or dyslexic users. Now Google Assistant has further combined browser and translation to add the function of reading webpages aloud.

As long as the user opens the webpage on the mobile phone and says OK Google, Read it or Read this page to the mobile phone, it will read the content of the webpage by voice. If combined with the translation function on the interface, the Google Assistant can also translate the entire page without translating it. It is very convenient to read the translated content directly, and the news, encyclopedia, teaching, etc. on the web page can be listened to in the future.

Google Assistant can read webpages aloud in 42 languages including Chinese, but this function currently only supports Android 5 and above mobile phones, and is applicable when browsing content with Chrome, Google App or Google News App. BP5068-15 is also a free public webpage, if Web pages that can only be viewed by subscription will not be read aloud. If the website/domain administrator chooses opt-out, the read aloud function is also not available.

Basically, just use the Chrome browser to open a webpage, then call out the Google Assistant and say: read it or read this page, it will read aloud, but the first time you use the phone may ask you to allow permission to use the screen, read notifications and other permissions.

When reading aloud, you can also find out where you are reading, that sentence and word will be highlighted (Text Sync on), and you can also adjust the speed below to speed up or slow down the reading.

The function of direct translation is impressive, and the method is very simple. Just click the translation in the menu and the language you want. You can also notice that after clicking on the translation, it does not read from the beginning, but instead reads aloud in Chinese, and immediately recognizes the paragraph and reads it out, which is also very impressive. Of course, if you want to listen to the translation from the beginning, pull the play below. Timeline will do. As the quality of Google Translate improves, the sentences read aloud will become more grammatical and smoother.

When reading aloud, you can turn off the screen and listen to it in the background. You can listen to some long-form articles, and you don’t need to lower your head and swipe your phone while walking.

However, the voice here does not have Google Nest or the Google Assistant that asks you a question. It is the voice read aloud in Google Translate, but there is no problem with sentence segmentation. When reading English web pages, the voice is more natural, and there are four voices of two men and two women to choose from.

Some people may think that the whole process seems to be text-to-speech, but if you try it a few times, you will find that even if it is a long article, or most of the translated sentences are accurate, you can clearly feel that it reads sentences, paragraphs, not texts. This is thanks to Google's use of machine learning to create natural-sounding text-to-speech models suitable for long texts, taking into account stress, intonation, and rhythm.

At present, the browser can read aloud. If developers want their programs to support this function, they can also add the Google Assistant's reading function to the application through Actions on Google, so that users can listen to the content in the program.