Introducing the Google Translate app for iPhone

Tuesday, February 8, 2011 | 10:47 AM

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and Google Translate Blog.)

Back in August 2008, we launched a Google Translate HTML5 web app for iPhone users. Today, the official Google Translate for iPhone app is available for download from the App Store. The new app has all of the features of the web app, plus some significant new additions designed to improve your overall translation experience.

Speak to translate
The new app accepts voice input for 15 languages, and—just like the web app—you can translate a word or phrase into one of more than 50 languages. For voice input, just press the microphone icon next to the text box and say what you want to translate.



Listen to your translations
You can also listen to your translations spoken out loud in one of 23 different languages. This feature uses the same new speech synthesizer voices as the desktop version of Google Translate we introduced last month.



Full-screen mode
Another feature that might come in handy is the ability to easily enlarge the translated text to full-screen size. This way, it’s much easier to read the text on the screen, or show the translation to the person you are communicating with. Just tap on the zoom icon to quickly zoom in.


And the app also includes all of the major features of the web app, including the ability to view dictionary results for single words, access your starred translations and translation history even when offline, and support romanized text like Pinyin and Romaji.

You can download Google Translate now from the App Store globally. The app is available in all iOS supported languages, but you’ll need an iPhone or iPod touch iOS version 3 or later.

47 comments:

AndroTux said...

Why are you going to support iPhone? Apple also does not support Google. Please.. stop that ;)

Ted Avery said...

The app does not appear in the Canadian app store.

sites.google.com/site/3dslovakia - Norbert Chromek said...

heey "AndroidChromeOS" SHUT UP! I think it´s super that is google doing apps for iphone (i dont have iphone), I am proud to google! :)

Alfonso said...

Beautiful! now we need the Gmail app ;)

Caio R. N. Pereira said...

Downloaded by opening the link on my iPhone.

@caiornp

Caio R. N. Pereira said...

We are just missing the functionality to take a picture of something, do OCR, and translate it! Almost like the babel fish...

@caiornp

jmchatton said...

This should definitely be ported to webOS. Porting from iOS to webOS only takes a few hours, and it would be great to see this app in webOS!

Baishakh Mishra said...

Awesome. Nice app on for iPhone. Please bring GMail,Google Docs native for iPhone.

Jason Hansen said...

Awesome! My Google folder is still missing a native Google Talk app! Please...

Akinity said...

Superb transliteration in both English and Japanese. Much stronger than Dragon.
Translation is poor in either direction.
Text to voice is pretty good for both languages.

Paul Eccles said...

@AndroidChromeOS, Apple does support Google. Google is the default search engine for Safari on Mac and iPhone. On a Mac you can right-click on any word and search it in Google, system-wide. Apple use Google for their maps service too.

eric said...

I'm impressed, congratulations to the team!

Unknown said...

SpeechTrans iPhone app uses Nuance and is 95% accurate in Speech Recognition, unlike Google's 60% Speech Recognition Accuracy. If you want to magically be able to speak multiple languages check out www.SpeechTrans.com or search for SpeechTrans on the App store. SpeechTrans also has Facebook Chat Integration so you can speak to people across the world in different languages through Facebook!

Deen said...

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Josh Centers said...

Thanks for the app, it works great! Glad to see Google supporting the iPhone. Few other tech companies would develop so many apps for a competitor's platform. That's part of what makes Google awesome.

Nick said...

Google, you should consider adding Dari and Pashtu to the supported languages. I realize that Arabic and Farsi are already on the list, but the vast majority of Afghans don't speak either of those languages. This app could be extremely useful to deployed military members, or anyone else in Afghanistan who doesn't speak the languages. Please consider this for your next update.

Nick said...

Google, you should consider adding Dari and Pashtu to the supported languages. I realize that Arabic and Farsi are already on the list, but the vast majority of Afghans don't speak either of those languages. This app could be extremely useful to deployed military members, or anyone else in Afghanistan who doesn't speak the languages. Please consider this for your next update.

Unknown said...

I support google as well for developing apps (any software really) for other devices, even if they don't respond in kind, and think they should be commend for offering so many services at either low cost or no cost. Dont know if everyone has seen the google voice apps as well... if you haven't you should check it out. Way to go Google!

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Unknown said...

Amazing! So much power -- and it's free. Thank you. Just wondering, is this based on the original meta-language developed by NASA for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975?

Unknown said...

i love this app. thank you google.
great job...i love google. if i don't have google i am lost from this planet. i have GV GMAIL

Pau Sanchez said...

Here comes an idea:
Add a new display mode in which you display the camera, so if you point the mobile to the person that is talking, it will be like watching subtitles on a movie.

It will not be a great feature from the technical perspective (since seems quite easy now that you have speech recognition and translation) but it will be engaging.

It would also be easy to add subtitles in different colors according to different voices.

This is just an idea I wanted to share ;)

Massachusetts Forecloser Lawyer said...

Awesome.Superb transliteration in both English and Japanese. Much stronger than Dragon.i love this app. thank you google.

Harsh9 said...

i love google.. true open source

Unknown said...

Unless I'm missing it, it seems like there's no easy to way to take the translation and put it into an email, SMS, etc.. Dragon Dictation does a good job of that, but clearly this will eventually make that app obsolete.. Is that functionality to come??

Unknown said...

With the audio capability , I see this as the beginnings of what will eventually grow to become a technological babelfish. This will make our world smaller and I implore google to invest heavily in enabling the audio aspects of this technology so most languages are supported. This is the future ! If only the technology was widely for our troops years ago.

Unknown said...

Google Translate app does not even start on iPhone 3GS with iOS 4.2. What's wrong????

dom9360 said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

dom9360 said...

One of Google's best apps. And, it's free! A nice addition would be for the app to capture words from a picture and translate. To "iphone" or "android" haters: I believe Google does a fair job at mixing and matching where it chooses to release an app first.

Tarak said...

Good to know about the Google app on iPhone. Its amazing, should conquer all hardware platforms!! Google rocks

Unknown said...

Google Translate fails to start on iPhone 4. When will you fix?????

NP said...

Ummm, why does the iphone version use TTS from the google host/desktop side and the other translate versions (Android) use local TTS that sucks... Google please correct this!

tibster said...

Good thing it is free since it will not start on the iPhone 4...

Ygor said...

Very good
Need create a official Blogger app for iOS =D

santosh_mankala said...

when can we this for black berry

Jose said...

Is there a way to have this on the web, in Windows? Many of us cannot just afford an Iphone right now.
I'd love to have that functionality in my laptop.

Unknown said...

Everybody with an iphone seems happy with this app.
So, when will we see a version for the android machines?

Tarak said...

Yes, Android on iPhone will be tremendous. Waiting for that..

Freyah said...

well for me a big round of applause. HAs sense! I think it's a big help:)

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Simin said...

impressed, congratulations to the team

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Kashif said...

It's Amazing Technology.

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Сергей Козич said...

super!
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عائض بن عوض القحطاني said...

Guys

Arabic is important too!

where is it? it suppose to be input language...

Thank you Google. I know that you will do it.

Anonymous said...

Android, here I come! (Just dumped nokia after "the merger")

Anonymous said...

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Lars Sorensen said...

What I don't understand is this. Why does the iPhone app offer more spoken languages, and more languages for voice input than the Android version? When can we expect to see an update on the Android?