Its no C3PO, but then what is?
Now, that unit is coming to your iPhone.
Apple’s super-simple-but-effective Translate app arrived on the iPhone with iOS 14.
Tim Mossholder / Unsplash
In iOS 15, it will come to the iPad, along with a radical addition: Conversation mode.
This lets two people converse in different languages.
You tap the microphone button and say something.
Charlie Sorrel / Lifewire
The app transcribes and translates your words, then Siri reads the result.
Its both simple, and staggeringly useful.
“But it’s the ease at which it is all done that really sets Translate apart.
There are numerous translation apps on the web and available on multiple types of phone.”
Apple Sauce
Translates Conversation feature is a perfect example of Apple at its best.
And if tapping the icon to speak is too much work, you could choose Auto Translate instead.
This keeps the mic running and detects speech as it happens, playing the result whenever theres a pause.
The app can even detect languages, and will recognize each speaker.
“This isn’t new technology,” says Florence.
The Apple Translate app is just so simple and straightforward and user-friendly."
Anywhere you could select text, you could now choose to translate it, right there.
This works in iMessages, tweets, email, and even classified ads in a local eBay app.
With one tap, you could translate this text.
“It will make communication so much simpler.”
The app is surprisingly good, although weve only tried it in quiet environments so far.
But it suffers the same limitations as any machine translator.
“The Translate app does what I would affectionately call the ‘Google translate’ treatment.
“It will frequently mess up sentence structure and without context that can really throw you off.”
Charlie Sorrel / Lifewire
Then again, its more than good enough for most purposes.
It may not give you the correct verb tense in Spanish, but so what?
For more advanced translations, humans are still required.
But to avoid misunderstandings, this is perfect.
And dont discount the fun factor.
I can see this being a great way to break the ice when traveling.
For a while at least.
