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Suggestion for translator app for iphone

I had an app on my phone before that would translate menus, signs etc.. I must have deleted it during COVID. Traveling again soon.. we are starting My wayAlpine tour soon. what app would you suggest?
Thank you.

Posted by
9460 posts

Yep, Google Translate worked well for me in Denmark last month.

Posted by
15560 posts

I'm also looking for something. What about an app that translates printed matter? I know they are out there. I've got an iPhone, any apps for that.

I find google translate makes too many mistakes, you have to be careful.

Posted by
1647 posts

I have to concur with the others. Google Translate works really well with menus and even better in grocery stores. It may not be 100% perfect, but you can get the gist of the translation and understand what you are ordering. The picture mode is very easy to use as they have made improvements. It does have a tough time with handwritten menus because the cursive is hard to decipher.

Posted by
2267 posts

I find google translate makes too many mistakes, you have to be careful.

It may make mistakes, but it's demand impressive, and the best there is. Even high-level bilinguals rarely get translations 100% perfect.

Posted by
32171 posts

I would also suggest Google Translate as it works reasonably well and is being improved on a regular basis. However as others have noted, it doesn't always do a perfect translation and I can confirm that from personal experience. I had an opportunity to test it fairly extensively in Italy a few years ago, and found that it sometimes gets the translation close, but sometimes it's completely wrong.

The app has a camera button which seems to work reasonably well to translate written content.

You may need online access (ie: a data plan) for some languages, but Google does have offline versions which can be downloaded for some languages.

Posted by
2274 posts

Coming this September to Apple's iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 releases

Translate Camera

System wide translation has expanded to the Camera app in ‌iOS 16‌, allowing the ‌iPhone‌'s camera to be used for real-time translation of signs, menus, packaging, and more.

Just open up the Camera app and point it at the text that you want to translate. Tap on the text selection button to select detected text, and then tap on the translate option to get an instant translation.
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Apple has always been hardware strong, but haven't always delivered on software ... so we'll see where this goes.