How To Translate Text On Your iPhone

There are a variety of ways to translate text between languages on your iPhone. You can select and translate in almost any app, including text you write. You can also translate text inside photos and spoken text in a special built-in app.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you many different ways to translate text on your iPhone. 
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So there are a lot of different ways that you can take text and translate it from one language to another on your iPhone. Let's start with Webpages in Safari. Let's say you're at a webpage and it's in a different language. Well there are two ways to do it. One way is to select the text first. So I'm going to tap and hold here and then extend the selection. Once I have what I want translated selected I can use the Menu here and look for Translate. If you don't see it in the first set just arrow over to the next set of commands. 
When you use Translate it brings up this special set of controls here. You see the original text and you see the translated text. You can change the language if it didn't get the language right either for the original text or what you want to translate it to. There's also a Play button so it can speak the results. Down below you'll find a variety of different controls, one of which is to Copy the translation. So I've copied it and you can paste it somewhere else. We'll look at the rest of these in a bit. 
But Safari also gives you the ability to translate the entire webpage. When you first load a page, I'll reload this one and you'll see here a little icon right there that appears quickly, showing you it can do translation. It goes away but you can just tap the Reader button there and one of the options here is Translate. So you can select this and it will translate the entire contents of the page. You can tap here again and go to View Original to go back. 
But translation isn't just a special feature in Safari. It is actually system-wide in iOS. So, for instance, in the Messages app here I've got a message here I want to translate. If I just tap and hold it one of the options here is Translate. It will bring up that same set of controls here where I can change the languages on both ends if I want. I can also Copy that translation. But I can also translate text that I'm typing. So, for instance, I can type a response here and then if I select that response and then go through the Context Menu there's Translate. I can then pick the language here, so in this case English is the right language to start with, but I want it to go to German. There's the translation and I can use Replace With Translation to replace the selected text. 
You can do the same in other apps. For instance here I am in Pages. I can select some text here and then I can use Translate in the Context Menu. I can see the translation and I can replace it, if I want, and it replaces it right there in the document. 
Now you can also translate text that's imbedded inside of an image, like a photo. So I'll go to the Photos App here and let me zoom in on this section here. I can select the text, like that, just by tapping and holding and then swiping a bit to get the selection. Then I can go through the Context Menus and one of the options there is Translate. I'm going to change the language back to English and I get my translation. But this will work on images outside of Photos as well. Here I am in the Files app. I've got a jpeg image and I can just tap and hold on that and select the text there and then I can find Translate in the Context Menu. I could have also tapped this button here at the bottom right and that automatically selects any text it can find in the image. I can tap the Translate button and it will actually translate it in place. I see the translation on top of the image. 
This works on webpages too but it can be kind of tricky. Here I am on an actual webpage and there's just an image imbedded in this page. Selecting text here can be a little bit tricky. Sometimes you tap and hold and it gives you a Context Menu. Other times it allows you to select. So it is a bit hard to do. But if you can select the text then you can use Translate there. If you just can't get it to work on a specific page or with a specific image there is a fallback. This will work in a variety of different apps. Even ones that don't let you select text. That's to take a ScreenShot. You don't save the screenshot but you use the screenshot preview to do the translation. So, for instance, I'm going to zoom in here on this piece of text and I'm going to then screenshot by holding the side button and the volume up button. Click. Then I get the little preview here at the bottom left. I'll tap that to go to the Preview. Now once I'm in this Preview here I can, sometimes, select the text or tap this button here at the bottom right and it will select text for me. Then one of the things I can do is translate. It will actually translate the text in place. Or I can try selecting it here, like that. Then use the Menu Translate like that to get all these options. Maybe it's a little easier to read as well. Once I'm done with it I can just use the Trash button there at the top and delete the screenshot if I don't want to save it. 
Now you can also translate live images through the Camera. One is to use the actual Camera App here. I've got a sign here. I just printed this out on a piece of paper.  But imagine it is a real sign that you see in real life. Notice that the yellow box kind of forms around some text. I can now tap this button at the bottom right and it will kind of select that text there. Now I've got that text selected and I can go in with a tap and drag, select it like that and use Translate to translate this. I never actually even took a photo here. So I'll just exit the Camera App having done my translation. 
But there is another way to do it and you can do lots of different things in a special app that comes on your iPhone. It's the Translate App. You'll see it here. If you don't find it on any of your Home screens then go to the last home screen in the App Library and search for it there. Translate is built into your iPhone so you've got it. Now you have several different modes in the Translate App. One here allows you to type or to speak and then it will give you the translation. So I'll tap here, thank you, and you can see it gives me the translation there. It kind of saves these on individual cards. So I can now do another one and if I want I can even Favorite this so it remains in one of my Favorites and I can get back to it very easily. You can select the language here on both ends as well. 
You can also go to the Camera Mode and this will actually bring up your camera and it will try to translate what it sees. So in this case I'm going to change this so it will do German to English. Now you can see how it does that live. There's also this Conversation Mode where you've got a bubble, just kind of like the Messages App, and you can turn on the microphone and you can hold your iPhone between you and you can both talk, one in one language and one in the other. It will do translations. Its kind of makes it easy to have simple conversations while traveling. 
So I mentioned before in Safari when you go to Translate something or in just about any of the modes I showed before you've got buttons down here, like Add To Favorites. That will actually add that to the Favorites in the Translate app and also you can open this up in Translate. So Add it basically as a card in Translate. 
You also have this last Menu item which is Download Languages. This gives you the ability to download languages for off-line use. Very useful if you're traveling somewhere and you don't have a consistent connection. Apple hasn't been doing translations like this as long as Goggle has. So, if you really need to get to some language that Apple hasn't added yet go to translate.goggle.com or Safari and you can enter or paste text here and you've got a much larger selection of languages to go to and from.
So as you can see you've got tons of different options for translating text on your iPhone. These will all work on the iPad as well. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 3 Responses to “How To Translate Text On Your iPhone”

Sheldon

10 months ago

Thanks bunches

Alec James

Very useful indeed. Thanks

william cloonan

Really do appreciate the help on this subject of translating text. Outstanding video as always Gary