Best Free Translation Apps for Android and iOS
Learning a language outside of school can feel like going into a big unknown territory. You are faced with a vast body of unfamiliar words and sentences. You watch movies in your target language but you can’t even tell words apart.
You may decide to forget the idea altogether and rely on translation applications to help you in need, for example, when you are traveling.
In any case, these applications are useful for you whether you want to learn new languages or not.
These apps will help you with your translation needs:
Google Translate:
Any list of the best translation apps must start with Google Translate. It is the most well-known translation app in the world, and its popularity is well-deserved.
It offers several features, from camera translation to conversation translation. It’s also very convenient for learners because it reads the translations, and unlike many other apps, it translates full sentences.
It does support translation between 108 languages. It does also support offline translation between 59 languages.
Fortunately, English is one of the languages supported in offline mode. Although the English translations are mostly accurate, occasional errors do occur.
WordReference:
This app is like a dictionary. Yes, it does not translate full sentences, but it gives you all the possible meanings of a word, along with important information about it like gender and whether it’s a noun, verb, adverb, et cetera.
It also gives examples of words in context, an essential feature if you want to learn collocations, which are the patterns in which words occur together. Just because two words are often used together in English does not mean that their literal translations do the same in other languages.
Learning collocations through examples is important if you’d like to sound like a native speaker instead of transferring usage from your native language to your target one, which can create very awkward sentences.
But nothing compares to learning directly from native speakers and having them provide you with translations themselves. Now you may be telling yourself “How am I going to find someone who speaks both the language I want to learn and my language.” But don’t worry about that. WordReference has a forum of native speakers where you can ask for a translation of a sentence and get reliable answers.
You can also look through previous questions asked by others as past discussions can be searched and found easily using keywords. But keep in mind that the people in the forum would not like it if you ask questions without effort on your part, especially obvious questions whose answers are easy to find. So try to do your own research and suggest your own translation even if it’s wrong. They will appreciate the effort.
If you don’t want to download the app, you can find all the features on the website wordreference.com.
Reverso:
This app is well-known among even the most seasoned and professional translators. When you type a word or phrase, it gives you translated examples from real contexts, like subtitles of movies and published articles. So it’s perfect for learning collocations.
But this is not everything. Reverso also offers important tools for language learners, including verb conjugations, flashcards, games, and puzzles.
TripLingo:
As the name TripLingo suggests, this app is designed especially to help people in their travels.
If you are abroad in a non-English-speaking country, don’t worry. TripLingo has you covered. Just open your phone, click on the app icon, and press the microphone button: now you are ready to communicate with the local citizens. Speak in your native language, and it will translate it accurately into their language.
But this isn’t its only benefit. This app is a treasure mine for learners, even those who are not travelers. Its phrasebook contains over 2,000 phrases suitable for all situations, ranging from slang to very formal language. Add to that the audio lessons, which are perfect for those who don’t want to get too distracted learning from multiple sources at a time.
After you finish a lesson, you can use TripLingo’s intelligent quizzes to help you practice what you’ve learned. There are also flashcards, which are efficient visual aids that boost the speed of learning.
Finally, the grammar and words of a language should not be considered separately from the culture of the people who speak it.
If you are learning any language, you must keep in mind that having a perfect accent and immaculate grammar will not help you if you unintentionally say something offensive to speakers of that language.
Communication isn’t only about saying what you want; it also involves understanding the nuances of meaning and connotations of phrases in relation to certain situations, which may differ across cultures.
You need to ensure that people don’t interpret what you say or do in a way that you’ve never intended. It is a good thing then that TripLingo offers a cultural guide to help you avoid giving offense or seeming ignorant.
TranslateMe:
This app offers conversation and camera translation, which means it translates everything written or spoken, all for free.
You can also translate a photo from your gallery. The translations can also be stored in history and marked as favorites, so you can go back and revise previous translations. Learners can also benefit from the TranslateMe phrasebook.
Read also: Top Spanish English translation apps