Google Translate iPhone App – A HUGE Help for Business and Travel

February 10th, 2011 by Erin Posted in Business, Technology | No Comments »

GOOGLE-TRANSLATE-FOR-IPHONEThere were many noteworthy things going on in technology this past week, like exciting talk of Apple releasing the iPad 3 in the fall and the ho-hum news of Facebook moving its headquarters from Palo Alto to Menlo Park, CA.

But what was of real interest to me, and I’m sure a lot of other people, was the new Google Translate app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

Available for free from the iTunes store, the new app translates voice input for 15 languages!

Google Translate for iOS also translates words or phrases into 50 languages and can read translations aloud in 23 languages.

According to the Google Mobile Blog, “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.”

In January, Google launched a similar Translate app for Android devices.

Traveling for business or pleasure? Be sure to have Google Translate in your back pocket. This will no doubt be a handy tool for anyone traveling abroad – or even a boardroom businessman who has to communicate via satellite with, let’s say, foreign investors. Just talk right into the phone and have the translation read back to you aloud.

While handy, I do have to say that Search Engine Land may be over-dramatizing the launch of this app just a tad. They call Google Translate “a small glimpse at the future of search” – meaning that Google has broken ground in the new “search for words (and their meanings) in different languages” territory.

That is dicey terrain that will take many, many more years to dissect. Let us, instead, focus on the here-and-now – and use Translate for what it’s intended: Translation.

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