Translation App Germany, Switzerland and Austria

Google translate works well for me. I use an I-phone. It will take up to 140 characters for translation, and when you tap the speaker on the "other" language will give you the pronunciation.

Right now I use it to learn basic phrases I may use in the countries I will be visiting.

@Colette,

Do you use your app off-line?

Try jibbigo... works well for Spanish. Works offline as well.

Judy , it would be helpful to beable to use the app off line.

The Word Lens app works offline and seems kind of like magic. You'll also find quite a bit of English info in those three countries.

Judy,

I go online to use Google Translate. It is not an app.

As a German I'm begging you not to speak "Google translator"-German or any other kind of "App-German" to me. Please just open with a polite "Do you speak English?" (to show me you're not taking it for granted) and then ask me anything in slang-free, plain English.

Thank you

;-)

The original request was not for on-the-spot phrase translation as I read it. That is good because apps do a lousy job of that. I took a few German classes but still run across words that I would like to look up. I have the Ultralingua German<->English Dictionary and it works ok.

While English is common in big cities and tourist favorites, I still find places that it is not normally spoken. For example, we stopped in a small neighborhood bar in Würzburg where the man and woman running the place were older. The clientele all stopped and gawked at us as we entered. Once we ordered in German, everyone was at ease and friendly. It helps to try. BTW, we got one of those simple German dishes that I like, Jägerschnitzel. It was made by the owner right behind the bar in his soccer team tee shirt.

http://mcchelsea.smugmug.com/Other-1/Advent-2013/i-q5h7zKt/0/M/image-M.jpg

For museums, I have noticed, at least in Germany, several had a recorded tours in English. They were self guided and you just listened to the little speaker thingy. It was about 3-10 euro. So that might be something to consider:)

Andy,

I doubt that you'll need a Translation app for the GAS tour. You'll probably find that the majority of people you'll be dealing with have reasonably good English language skills. I believe you'll be provided with a small Phrasebook with your tour package, so use that to try and learn a few of the polite words and phrases, and you should be fine.

I've tried Jibbigo with native German speakers, and have been told that it "some what gets the meaning across, but it's nowhere near grammatically accurate". Another one you could look at that provides much the same function as the Phrasebook is LingoPal (but it covers a much wider variety of languages, and has the same "canned phrases" with all of them).