Almost by chance, the M4C team (those who are not on vacation) was “hunting” for interesting news on the web and came across this reel:
If you viewed the reel within this article, you have probably heard it in English and noticed the “original language” indication at the top right. However, if you copy the link or access Mosseri’s official account from your mobile device to view this content, you will hear the CEO of Instagram speaking in the language you have set as your preference on Instagram.
For example, if I put Spanish as my preferred languafe, I will hear Mosseri talking in a perfect Spanish with a Mexican-English accent. And, for those who may not know this, Mosseri is actually more New Yorker than Friends TV Show.
You may be interested: Who is Adam Mosseri: CEO of Instagram and Threads
What is happening is that Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Threads, and Facebook, has started to implement what it announced a few months ago: the arrival of simultaneous translations with Meta AI, its artificial intelligence. As is usual, the feature was first launched in the United States. However, in some countries as Spain, users had not been able to experience it until now.
In fact, during the Meta Connect 2024 event, live demonstrations were presented to illustrate this new development.
What is Instagram’s simultaneous translation?
If you have your Instagram configured in Spanish, every time you watch a video of someone speaking in another language (and who has chosen to allow their content to be translated with AI), the audio will automatically be translated into your default language. This applies to both the audio and the subtitles (if they are present in the video).
That is to say, whenever the option is available, the AI will use the creator’s tone of voice as a base and then…work its magic.
But, beyond the fact that this is already remarkable, there is an additional detail: if you pay attention to how the speaker’s lips move—in this case, Mosseri—you will notice that he is mouthing in Spanish (albeit awkwardly, but he is doing it).
How to listen to Instagram reels in other languages
If you would like Instagram to translate reels for you into Spanish, you have two options:
- Go to Settings and select the “Language and Translations” option. A drop-down menu will appear, allowing you to set content to be translated by default into several languages, including Spanish. In addition, you should ensure that the “Translate voice” option remains active. You can also choose to have audio transcriptions appear in the default language you select.
- The other option is to select the translation directly on the reel. To do so, once you are watching the video, tap the three dots located at the top right corner of the video, click, and select the “Translate post” option and the language you wish to set as default.
If you do not like this option, you may deactivate it. You simply need to go to your settings, find “language and translations,” and choose to deactivate it.
And if you have not yet encountered this feature, rest assured: this new functionality will gradually appear in all of our accounts, just as has occurred with prior updates.
For the moment, we have tried to listen to Mosseri in Hindi, Japanese, and Italian but…it has not worked. Most likely, since this is a very new update and possibly still in a testing phase, there are some languages that are not yet available.
This has not been the only new feature launched by Instagram; in the same video, Mosseri announces other updates, which we describe for you in this article.
Photo: Instagram
