Google Translate has been available for mobile platform from the web interface, but Android had the benefit of an exclusive Google Translate app for a while now. The version of translate available in Android and its ability to do conversation mode has been really impressive. Looks like part of this is coming to iOS starting today and the initial impression of the app is definitely impressive.The free application is available in App Store for download in iOS platform (iPhone / iPod Touch) and is fully functional, except the conversation mode.
The application allows you to select the source language and the language to which the text needs to be translated. You can enter the text you want to translate for any of the supported languages (there is lot many options for this) or you can opt to speak the message instead. All languages are not yet supported for speech recognition, but that list is also growing slowly. If you have opted to speak the message, then you can choose to validate the speech recognition using the on-screen text.
Once translated, the message is displayed right below the original text and you can choose to listen to the text being spoken out, if the final language supports the spoken mode. If you are going to come across this message often, then you can also star it to make it part of your quick reference list. You can also open the translated message in full screen to share it with another person who understands the language or even to understand the fonts and learn the language.
This is definitely one of the nice applications available through smartphone that can definitely be very handy. If they include the camera mode in this to capture a text and translate that using Google Goggles, then it will be the complete package.
Author: Vinod
Source: Google Blog
Been playing with this app since you recommended it last week. It is definitely much better than many of the other Translating apps I've tried (and I've tried at least three). I love the "listen" feature so you can actually hear how the translated phrase is pronounced.
ReplyDeleteHowever, what I find MOST annoying is that there is no way to copy and paste the translated text into your iPhone buffer. This app could be improved so much by having the options copy/paste, Email, SMS, Facebook or Twitter the translated phrase directly from the translation screen. Until then, really, it's just pretty to look at :(
Agreed. With no way to get the translated text out to anywhere, it seems like an interesting toy.
ReplyDeleteOn a related subject, one cool app Deb turned me on to recently is Dragon Dictation. It's from Nuance, the same folks who do Dragon Naturally Speaking. This one is really cool in that it let you speak your message and then dispatch it to any number of destinations: SMS, Facebook, Twitter, etc. It does a pretty decent job of work recognition and looks to be a real time saver. Heck, even I'll start sending more text messages if it gets to be this easy :-)
@Deb, I was wondering on the Copy Paste too... I just tried the app again and double tapping on the translated text gets you the choice of Copy. I think since the partial copy may result in errors, they don't allow selection, but just copy the entire translated text for you. Check if this works for you
ReplyDelete