One of the most indispensable skills possessed by many of the leading web browsers is the ability to translate foreign text on a webpage into your native language. Google Chrome, for example, does this by detecting the language that the website is written in and then converting it to your preferred language. It is especially useful if you come across a website that is written in a language you don't understand. Unfortunately, if you're still using an old version of Chrome, you should consider updating to version 96 or newer in order to continue using the browser's built-in translation feature.

Google announced in a Chrome community post that it is shutting down the Chrome Translate feature for Chrome 95 and older. If you're using this legacy version, you'll eventually see an error message that states, "This page could not be translated."

To recall, Chrome 95 was released in October 2021 with a slew of improvements, including more secure payment authentication across the web, the ability to save tab groups, and the rollout of Material You for everyone on Android 12 without activating any flags.

Google has not specified a date for when translation support for old Chrome versions will be shuttered, but it said that this effort has already been set in motion. When the day finally comes, users will no longer be able to translate web pages without installing an extension, among a few other alternatives.

Chrome's 96 version was released in December 2021, so it should be available to most people by now. Only users on older operating systems may not have a way to update beyond Chrome 95. For example, Chrome 95 is the last version of the browser available on Android 5.0 Lollipop, while iOS 13 has to make do with Chrome 93. On the desktop side of things, Chrome 87 is the last release to work on macOS Yosemite 10.10 while Windows XP and Vista were already cut off with Chrome 49 way back.

On desktop computers, you may consider installing the Google Translate extension on the browser. It's as accurate as the built-in translation feature, and it will continue to receive support regardless of the browser version. If you still have a phone running Android 5, it might just be time to upgrade to one of many great phones out there, if just to stay more secure online with the latest security updates.

The cutoff for older versions of Chrome may be related to new Translate capabilities that could not be compatible with older releases. In the future, Chrome could gain the ability to translate text in images, if a recently spotted Chromium source code eventually goes live.