As much as I wish I spoke 7 languages, I bare speak one 
So traveling abroad can be challenging for me at times. On a recent European business trip I found myself in several situations where the person I was trying to communicate with didn't speak English and I didn't speak French or German. Luckily with a quick download of iTranslate from the App Store I was able to get my messages across.
iTranslate brings Google translations into a native app
Let's start with the fact that iTranslate uses Google for it's language translations. So this means first of all you have to have an internet connection to use it and secondly, you could go to translate.google.com and do it yourself. With that said, having a FREE native App is usually better than using the website in Safari. iTranslate also goes beyond what you can do on the website by offering in App purchases of voices. So not only can you do the text translation, but you can have it speak the results in a real voice to the person you're trying to communicate with.
How does it work?
After downloading the App I was able to key in some text and have it translated pretty quickly. Sitting around the dinner table with some new friends from Portugal (they spoke English) they were able to verify that the translations were actually quite good. I then downloaded two voices: French and German. On my way to the airport I got into a cab with a driver that didn't speak any English at all. I simply showed him the display and off we went to my destination. The problem though was when he tried to ask me a question in French and I was clueless. I finally was able to figure out on my own what he wanted to know (terminal number), and gave it too him. So that's something you'd have to keep in mind with any of these apps is that two way communication can be difficult especially if the other person is speaking quickly.
Room for improvement
Speech recognition would be the next natural evolution for these kinds of Apps. Imagine how could it would be having a two-way conversation with someone and having the App translate in both directions verbally! Also it would great even it if had a direct tie with Dragon Dictation so that you could dictate what you wanted translated. Another killer feature would be the ability to scan/photograph a document (like a restaurant menu) and have it OCR then translate the text. How sweet would that be? Yes I want the universal translator from Star Trek where everyone just speaks in the their native tongue and every one understands what you're saying.
The Bottom Line
The fact that there is a free version of this App makes this a no brainer. I was also impressed with the quality of the optional voices. Since the voices are optional and you can pick and choose just the ones you want/or need that's a nice added advantage to having megabytes of voice files that you may never use. Hopefully we'll see Google's recently rumored efforts for voice translation realized on the iPhone some day.
iTranslate
iTranslate brings Google language translations to your iPhone or iPod touch in a native App. The ability to optionally purchase voices in different languages is a nice plus.
- iTranslate
- Alexander Marktl
- Get on App Store
- Free
All info was collected on 9th February, 2010 when the app was reviewed.
About Terry White
Terry is the co-author of The Best Selling "The iPhone Book" 1st, 2nd and 3rd editions. He has been active in the industry for over 25 years and is the founder and president of MacGroup-Detroit, Inc., Michigan's largest Macintosh Users Group, host of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and a technology writer - Terry White Tech Blog.
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