Why is it important? The language translation application can greatly facilitate our communication with others.
When I was 16 years old, I learned Spanish for a summer in Spain. I walked around the country with a bag-of-mouth Electronic Dictionary (which was a high technology at the time. Today's language translation applications are much more functional than older plastic devices with plastic buttons and single-line display. Many applications allow you to speak out or make a question in English and translate it into a foreign language immediately. The program can read the result aloud or display it on the mobile phone screen, you can also translate the response from the local language back to English immediately. A single application can translate multiple languages, more languages than a full dictionary package. In South Korea, Japan, and China communities in San Francisco, I used three translation applications to test these promising features. Two of them are for the iPhone and one is for both the iPhone and Android phones. The test results are mixed. The use of these applications is faster than the dictionary or common language manual, and the program can understand the complete sentence. However, in a noisy environment, translation programs with speech recognition functions cannot always capture what users say, especially when these words are not in English. This makes communication with strangers more inconvenient than usual. I am still very excited about the future of translation applications, but there is still a long way to go. Sayhi Translate available platform: iPhone, the company said the Android version will be available in a few months. Price: It is currently $0.99, and will be gradually raised to $2.99, which is my favorite of the three applications. It looks the most attractive and best to use. After selecting the language you are using and the target language you want to translate, you can press the blue button on the screen to say or print the words you want to translate, it will read the Translation results out loud (and also display the results in text on the screen ). In this way, the other party can click the green button to answer the question in his own language. sayhi will translate his words into your language. The application supports more than 20 languages, including Arabic, Korean, Swedish and Italian, as well as a large number of common dialects, and can be read aloud in most languages. You can choose to share the conversation fragments on Facebook or any other place. You can choose between men and women and control the reading speed. As long as I have a clear pronunciation and a stable speech speed, sayhi can understand what I said. But when a person whose mother tongue is not English is trying to answer questions like "How do I cook this dish ?" When such a problem occurs, or when they initiate a conversation, it basically doesn't understand. I found that it is best to give out what I want to say in advance. After that, you can always click the phrase on the screen, and then click "speak" to play back the recorded translation content, or directly direct your phone to the person you asked for help. I guess sayhi would do better if I asked a simpler question or might persuade others to answer the question. Remember one more thing: although you can read historical translation records without wireless network services, you must be able to connect to the wireless network for new translation, or read the existing translation aloud. When you plan to use mobile phones in other countries, this may cause high costs. Google Translate available platforms: Android, iPhone, and webpage prices: the coolest thing about free Google Translate is that the absolute number of languages is large: it can translate text and speech in more than 60 languages. This application has a typical Google style and is very easy to use, but has no eye-catching appearance. There are two language buttons near the top of the screen. Click them to switch languages. A two-way arrow between two buttons determines the position of the input and output boxes. You can enter text in the box on the screen or read it out loud. If you are using Android, it also has the augmented reality function, you can take a picture of the printed text, select it, and then get the translation result. Unfortunately, Google translation, like sayhi, has encountered difficulties in understanding what people I met have said. Even though the translation made to the English I speak can be understood, an employee at a Japanese video store told me that he really needs to think about it to understand what it means to pop up on the screen, because it is not very clear. The small two-way translation button often causes exceptions. For example, I thought it was ready to hear me speak English and translate it into Japanese, but in fact it was designed to translate Japanese into English. If this button can be larger, it will be easier to mark it more prominently. In addition to viewing past translations, like sayhi, you must be able to connect to the Internet to use Google Translate. Mantaphrase available platform: iPhone price: limited edition free, only Chinese and Japanese phrase translation. The fee is USD 3.99 for each added language. Mantaphrase forced users to choose from a series of predefined phrases by topic, so I thought it would be better than the other two. It is also the only application I tested that can be used without connecting to a wireless network. But I encountered some problems. This application lists long phrases for you to choose from, as well as a list of search entries and four categories of topics (business, daily, direction, and transportation ), each topic is subdivided into more topics (for example, you click "transportation ", we can see "planes", "cars and taxis", "Trains", and "buses"). Each topic may have different special circumstances. These layers quickly make people dizzy. Sometimes I don't remember whether a phrase has been seen (Fortunately, I can still search for keywords in the application ). You can click a phrase to highlight it in English and the language you selected on the screen (currently only in Japanese and Chinese, but the company says it will support French and Spanish soon. On the screen, the "yes" and "no" buttons will be displayed to your contact objects in due time for them to click and respond. This is clever, but it does not take into account the fact that strangers may not want to touch your phone (they are very embarrassed to touch my phone ). Click the bottom of the screen to easily display the appropriate supplemental phrase. sliding from top to bottom shows all the questions you asked in the current conversation. When using the Chinese language settings, I asked a person to successfully show me the direction of the nearest pharmacy to learn about the price of a scarf in different shops, he was politely rejected when asked whether a store could pay by credit card. But when I was in a bakery and a restaurant trying to get information about recommended dishes, mantaphrase seemed powerless: people I met these two times recommended a restaurant on the street corner to me, they thought I was asking where to eat, not what to eat.
