How Handheld Translators Work and Why They’re Handy for Travel
Key takeaways
- Type or speak a sentence or two into the app, tap a button, and out it returns in the language of your choice.
- Google Translate, Apple Translate, or DeepL Translate will all do the job for free, though Google’s product is widely considered the gold standard for cross-language chitchat.
- But what if you want to push past translating menus and asking for extra towels, and carry on a conversation with a new friend you met on a trip, or the in-laws who are visiting from halfway across the world?
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
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Hans Christian Andersen once said, “To travel is to live,” and while that’s a romantic notion, he probably wasn’t careening through Gyeongju, South Korea, at midnight in the back of a taxi with a driver who didn’t speak a lick of English.
Today’s world traveler has it awfully easy when it comes to understanding the local lingo, as even a basic modern cell phone app can offer a pretty good translation of common phrases delivered in everything from Abkhaz to Zulu. Type or speak a sentence or two into the app, tap a button, and out it returns in the language of your choice. Tap another button, and your phone can even speak those sentences aloud. It takes a little doing to turn this into a credible two-way conversation—especially if the cab driver isn’t slowing down—but with some patience and good humor, two strangers can engage in a reasonable discussion this way.