My Pocket Travel Translator – Google Translate (Don’t leave home without it)
Well, many of you probably are using Google Translate while surfing already. This powerful instant translator (between 90 languages) would let you browse and understand almost every webpage in the world- Russian, Japanese, Thai, Italian…. AND you can get translation by speaking to it, or taking a photo of a sign or menu in another language! The latest version is capable of Automatic language detection in speech/conversation mode – start translating with speech input and Translate will recognise which of the two languages is being spoken, allowing you to have a more fluid conversation with another person. Well, what happens if you’ve no internet while travelling? That’s OK, Read on as I’m going to show you how…
- Download and Install Google Translate to your phone – go to here (Android) , or here for iPhone for description, then search in App Store on your iphone to install directly.
- For Android phone, Open it, tab Settings / Manage Offline languages, then just select and click the download icon to save that language to your phone – Remember to do this before you travel to that country and while you’ve have wifi access.
- For iPhones, not so powerful yet, but you can star (basically save) your favorite translated phrases/sentences for future offline use. Just click the star icon to the right top of the translated phrase/sentence (turning it yellow) and it will be saved for retrieval when you click the star icon at the bottom 3 tab bar.
Note: for Android users, you still lose the capability of voice input/interactive voice translation or photo translation even with downloaded offline language support but no internet.
