Spoken Cantonese & Jyutping recently added!
I am learning Cantonese so a good translation app is a must to help with my studies.
Until recently Google Translate only supported written ‘Traditional Chinese’ with no vocalisation or Jyutping (phonetic Romanisation), so was no use to me. However I noticed a couple of weeks ago the app had been updated & now supports the said functionality. I am English but my wife is from Hong Kong, she reckons Google Translate is about 85% accurate, which is a massive improvement and better than any other app I have tried.
Until recently Google Translate only supported written ‘Traditional Chinese’ with no vocalisation or Jyutping (phonetic Romanisation), so was no use to me. However I noticed a couple of weeks ago the app had been updated & now supports the said functionality. I am English but my wife is from Hong Kong, she reckons Google Translate is about 85% accurate, which is a massive improvement and better than any other app I have tried.
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Wow!
This app is fantastic. I was looking for a movie to watch and one of the movie descriptions was in Spanish. I downloaded this app, completely free, took about 10s on my iPhone. The app is incredibly easy to navigate. I clicked on the lens feature and pointed it at the description and in real time it showed me what it said; like the words literally changed from Spanish to English like it was always in English. Also, it had a feature that allows you to switch back to the original text, choose a single word rather than a sentence and it even has other cool features like real time transcribing so you can see what someone is saying, translated to another language, while they are speaking! Apps like Google Translate serve the unselfish purpose of bringing people closer together. Hundreds of languages. One app. One world. One love.
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Disability support - Please 🙏
Google Translate is by far the fastest most accurate translation tool available in the App Store. Trust me I have searched and tested all of them. I have a really particular gripe with it though, which is that if you want to translate directly into ear devices either headphones or hearing aids you have to buy google branded in ear headphones. These are not compatible with hearing aids and place partial hearing users at a real disadvantage. I am just about to start a new job overseas and I’m desperate for a real time translator that will translate direct to my hearing aids. Please google consider the needs of your disability users thank you.
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No more predictive text
Why why why did you remove this? In the latest version you stopped all iOS keyboard typing predictions. Why? This is sooo irritating. Clearly you think your predictions are the best! Well not only are they not, you didn’t think this through in your moment of arrogant genius. Im not even a fan of the iOS keyboard but what you’ve done is even worse. Now I have to type every word in full and all my learned words are useless and now I have to click in the app not on the keyboard and keep doing it over and over. Grrr. Why do product teams get given such freedom to do so much destruction ! I mean seriously, who would have thought this would improve anyone’s user experience ??Who is managing these people ?
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Response from developer
Hi there. We'd like our users to have the best possible experience with Google Translate app. The product team is constantly working to improve the Translate experience across all devices. We'll share your feedback with them. Thanks.
Google Translate
I use GT to help learn Thai vocabulary. The written Thai is hard for me to read but the GT transliteration using English letters is useless since it has very poor connections to how the words are spoken. It seems as though the transliteration algorithm simply assigns an English letter to a Thai letter. Just like English, Thai letters can have different sounds in different words. One vowel in Thai is always assigned the English letter X by GT. That makes the transliteration unusable. Some Thai words are sometimes spoken with some of the sounds in the word not having a Thai letter for that sound in it. For example “tam” “to do”, is written “ta” in Thai letters. So GT says the word is ta and not tam as it is spoken. It would be fairly simple I would think to use the spoken Thai that GT has and a voice recognition algorithm to create much better transliterations of the Thai words to help an English speaker like me to remember the Thai vocabulary by seeing how the transliterated word is spelled. Right now, the only way to remember the Thai words is their sound with no help from the text. thx
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I like it
I like that it’s able to translate live onto my screen!
Helpful but annoying
What you expect from Google Translate, but falls victim to some questionable UI choices. Minor inconveniences but they really add up and annoy me.
1. The audio pronunciation button for the original language sits underneath the volume bar. So I turn my volume up, then hit the audio and but it just reactivates the volume. So I have to wait 3 seconds and wait for the volume to disappear.
2. When in camera mode, you can’t switch the languages with one tap like everywhere else. You’d have to exit out, swap the languages, and go back in, or change each language manually.
1. The audio pronunciation button for the original language sits underneath the volume bar. So I turn my volume up, then hit the audio and but it just reactivates the volume. So I have to wait 3 seconds and wait for the volume to disappear.
2. When in camera mode, you can’t switch the languages with one tap like everywhere else. You’d have to exit out, swap the languages, and go back in, or change each language manually.
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Response from developer
Hi there. We're sorry to hear about your experience. Could you please describe the issue you're experiencing in the Google Translate Help Community so we can investigate further: https://goo.gle/2tkDc6j? Thanks.
Transcribe no longer working continuously
I have successfully used the transcribe function on my iPad for the past year on a regular basis to translate live English to written Russian. This has worked perfectly and is invaluable. But for the past 2 weeks this app no longer functions correctly. When using transcribe, when talking, if there is a pause in the speech for more than about 10 seconds, the app hangs and it is not possible to start the translation/transcribing up again without a restart of the Application. This is really frustrating as it appears to be a change in the app. Previously it would run continuously for several hours, even with large gaps n the speech, but now is useless.
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Response from developer
Hi there. Try restarting your app, and if that doesn’t work restart your device. If the issue still persists, please create a post in the Google Translate Help Community to get help from our community of experts: http://goo.gle/2tkDc6j. Thanks.
Taiwan translate
My first time coming to Taiwan and I thought that English was spoken everywhere How wrong I was🤣🤣🤣 but my travel agent installed google translate for me and I swear it’s the greatest thing since man invented sliced bread hahaha😂😂😂 and I have a thick Australian accent so some times I just start waffling away and the looks and laughs I get are gold so I go straight to me phone and type it in with one finger typing which brings another round of laughs Fair dinkum google well done the pieman (Eddie )
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Almost, but not quite.
TLDR:
Pros:
Good for many needs.
Offline translation is major plus.
Cons:
Clumsier interface.
Inaccurate English to Thai.
—————-
Long version:
Interface:
I much preferred the previous interface.
Take deleting translation history, which now requires no less than 6 separate taps, which is far more than the previous version.
Translation:
Chinese.
It seems to do a good job with English <-> Chinese, although as another review said Cantonese is not supported.
Spanish and Italian:
So far this app appears quite accurate.
Thai.
It seems to have trouble translating from English -> Thai.
I wondered at first if that could be due to differences between formal Thai compared to that spoken in the Isaan area, which has Khmer influences.
However when I translated the same text using this app and a competing app a native Thai speaker from Isaan said that the competing app was more accurate.
Pros:
Good for many needs.
Offline translation is major plus.
Cons:
Clumsier interface.
Inaccurate English to Thai.
—————-
Long version:
Interface:
I much preferred the previous interface.
Take deleting translation history, which now requires no less than 6 separate taps, which is far more than the previous version.
Translation:
Chinese.
It seems to do a good job with English <-> Chinese, although as another review said Cantonese is not supported.
Spanish and Italian:
So far this app appears quite accurate.
Thai.
It seems to have trouble translating from English -> Thai.
I wondered at first if that could be due to differences between formal Thai compared to that spoken in the Isaan area, which has Khmer influences.
However when I translated the same text using this app and a competing app a native Thai speaker from Isaan said that the competing app was more accurate.
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Response from developer
Hi there. We're sorry to hear about your experience. Could you please describe the issue you're experiencing in the Google Translate Help Community so we can investigate further: https://goo.gle/2tkDc6j? Thanks.
