14 DAY TRIAL // The official Google Translate for iPhone app is now available for download from Apple’s App Store, Wenzhang Zhu, Google software engineer, has announced.
According to Zhu, the new Google Translate iPhone app has all the features of the web app, as well as some significant new additions designed to improve one’s overall translation experience.
One way to get things quickly interpreted by the app from as many as 15 languages is by speaking the words out loud.
That’s right! Speak-to-translate is a feature available in the Google Translate iOS app which, according to Zhu, accepts voice input for 15 languages and can translate a word or phrase into one of more than 50 languages.
Users simply press the microphone icon next to the text box and they can immediately say what they want to translate.
Users can then listen to their translations spoken out loud in one of 23 different languages via a feature that uses the same new speech synthesizer voices as the desktop version of Google Translate.
The app offers a full-screen mode for easier text reading, or to show the translation to a person you are communicating with. A handy zoom icon is there to quickly zoom in on any given translation.
“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,” Wenzhang Zhu explains.
In fact, here’s the full list of features listed by Google on the app’s iTunes page, just to make sure we (or Mr. Zhu) didn’t leave anything out:
With Google Translate you can:
* Translate text between 57 languages * Translate by speaking the text instead of typing it (15 languages) * Listen to your translations spoken aloud (23 languages) * Display translations in full screen mode to make it easier for others nearby to read * Star your favorite translations for quick access even when you’re offline * Access your translation history even when you’re offline * Spell out the translation of non-Latin script languages (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, etc..) in Latin characters to read it phonetically (e.g. Pinyin, Romaji) * View additional dictionary results for single words or short phrases.
The Google Translate iOS app is now available in all international App Store, Google said, supporting iPhones, iPod touchs, and iPads running iOS 3.0 or later.