translation

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on translation:

Shatter language barriers with these iOS-compatible translation earbuds

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Talk to almost anyone with these iOS compatible translation earbuds.
Get a live translation on your iPhone and in your ears with these futuristic earbuds.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Planning on traveling soon? If you’re going international, you might want to bring along something that will make communicating in another language easier. No, we don’t mean a dictionary, and we certainly don’t mean Google Translate.

Mymanu Clik S are award-winning translation earbuds. Pop them in your ears, and they will feed you a live translation of a conversation in a variety of languages. And right now, these futuristic earbuds cost less than ordinary AirPods. You can snag a pair for just $99 (regularly $220) with code CLIK.

How to translate web pages with Safari in iOS 14

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Apple makes it a snap to translate web pages with Safari in iOS 14.
Converting a web page into your preferred language is built right into iOS 14 Safari.
Graphic: Ed Hardy/Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

We live in a multicultural world, but a translation feature built into Safari in iOS 14 will make it just a bit easier for us to understand one another. Converting a web page from an unknown languages into your preferred one is as easy a couple of screen taps.

The same holds true for iPadOS 14, too.

Safari might translate webpages automatically in iOS 14

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Hong Kong police arrest smugglers with $1 million of iPhones and other devices
If Safari can easily translate webpages, you might never see this again.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Soon you’ll visit a webpage in an unfamiliar language and see it automatically translated to one you can read with the iPhone Safari web browser. This reportedly will be a feature of iOS 14.

No third-party app will be needed. And the translation will supposedly take place directly on the handset, not a remote server.

This Siri shortcut scans and translates text on any photo, sign or menu

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What could this possibly mean?
Photo: Jon Tyson/Unsplash

I live in Germany, and even though my German is fine, I often get beaten by notices and signs. In my native England, signs and notices are snappy. They use few words, and often annoying slogans, to get the point across. In Germany, an A4 (legal-size) sheet of paper with densely spaced type is the norm. And that’s just from neighbors complaining about people leaving their strollers on the wrong side of the entrance hall.

So, I decided to do something about it. I wrote a Siri Shortcut that scans one of these German essays using the iPhone’s camera, translates it, and shows it to you. There are apps that can do something similar, but my shortcut is way better, for several reasons.

The future is now with this portable language translator [Deals]

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CM translator
This slim, lightweight device translates 42 languages and lasts 24 hours on a single charge.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

From Star Trek to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, one of the signs of the future is a portable device that instantly translates languages. Well, it’s 2019, so we should expect things to feel properly futuristic.

Right on cue, we’ve now got access to an ultra-light, sleek, portable translator. And unlike the Babel fish, you don’t even need to stick it in your ear.

How to translate any PDF or sheet of paper

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If you can read it, you can translate it.
If you can read it, you can translate it.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

How do you translate a PDF? Maybe you scanned a page from a friend’s German cake recipes book. Or perhaps you’re living abroad and you have no idea what the police just made you sign. There are plenty of ways to translate PDFs and text, but most of them involve either A) Microsoft Word or B) uploading your private documents to a cloud service to be read.

Today we’ll see how to quickly scan a paper document, then translate its written text into English. You’ll be amazed at how fast it is.

Microsoft Edge for iOS now translates websites in an instant

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Microsoft Edge translation
Visit your favorite foreign sites in Microsoft Edge.
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Microsoft Edge for iOS now boasts instant web page translation.

The feature lets you visit your favorite foreign sites and enjoy them in your native tongue. It also gives you the option to quickly switch back to the site’s original language with little effort.

How to translate webpages on iPhone or iPad

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Cult of Mac in Catalan!
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Do you ever find yourself staring at a web page, unable to understand a word? All the letters look familiar, only they’re arranged into some weird order? That’s called “foreign,” and it’s how people from outside America talk to each other. Some of them don’t even write their websites in English.

Fortunately, a good old American company has done something about this terrible habit. Microsoft Translator can fix up a web page and turn all that foreign gibberish into a language we can all feel comfortable with. You may already use Google’s translate bookmarklet for this, but Microsoft’s version is so much better it’s in a different league.

How to use Siri Translate in iOS 11

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siri translate hero
Siri will answer you, no matter how stupid your question.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Siri translation seems like the most obvious thing in the world. You probably already asked him/her the meaning of a foreign word, or how to say an English phrase in another language. Under iOS 11, though, this will actually work.

All you have to do is to ask Siri how to say something, and s/he will respond with an answer. Even better, you can use Type to Siri to make the query, which may come in handy when you’re in a line at the market and you don’t want to start talking into your iPhone.

Rosetta Stone’s Free Navigator iPhone Apps Put Pronunciation Lessons in Your Pocket [Daily Freebie]

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Most Mac users will experience one of three reactions after reading the word “Rosetta.”

The first involves breaking into a cold sweat, and possibly hives, after remembering that Apple no longer supports the translator that ran all those old, useful apps written for PowerPC-based Macs after Apple switched over to Intel chips.

Option two, imagining the Rosetta Stone itself, the magical key to unlocking ancient script, stumbled upon by Napoleon’s troops

Or there’s an association with foreign phrases, mall carts and almost certainly the most recognizable name in language software, Rosetta Stone.

We’re focusing on that last one here, and about how Rosetta Stone has finally brought their language software, in the form of the Navigator series apps, to the iPhone — for free.

An iPhone App Might Have Saved The Life Of Boston Marathon Bombers’ Carjack Victim

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Although it’s been almost over a week since the carnage of the Boston Marathon Bombings and the related manhunt and shootout came to a close, but there are still a lot more questions than answers about what happened and why.

A new report from Boston.com, though, has filled in some of the blanks in regards to the three hours on April 18th in which the Tsarnaev brothers carjacked a Mercedes driven by a 26-year-old Chinese man… and it looks like an iPhone app helped save his life.

Waigo App Translates Chinese Menus

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Do you trust the translations you see on Chinese menus? I don’t. Why? Because my local Chinese restaurant — which lists dishes in Chinese, English and Spanish — manages to write a different description for each one.

Luckily, Waigo is here to help, with it’s augmented-reality translation. Or is that “here to confuse”?

Languages Might Be The Best Translation App Money Can Buy [Review]

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Chances are you’ve heard of the popular app iTranslate Voice that made a splash when it landed on the App Store earlier this year. iTranslate voice made it easy to quickly translate phrases and sentences, right on your iPhone.

Well, the folks at Tapity and Sonico Mobile haven’t been standing still, releasing a brand new app today called Languages that builds on the foundation of iTranslate Voice. I’ve been testing it out for the past few weeks, and it really is an incredible application.

iTranslate Voice: Like Siri Hooked Up With Google Translate

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iTranslate Voice is voice translation on the iPhone executed perfectly.
iTranslate Voice is voice translation on the iPhone executed perfectly.

One of my favorite jailbreak tweaks for the iPhone 4S (before I updated to iOS 5.1 and lost my jailbreak) was called Lingual, which enabled Siri to connect to Microsoft’s Bing Translate API and immediately translate words or phrases into a number of different languages.

Thanks to iTranslate Voice, you can now get the same functionality and more for any iPhone from the App Store. This excellent $0.99 app listens to you speak, then quickly translates your sentences into one of 31 languages. It’s super quick and incredibly accurate.