Hey, you’re here, so you probably know I write a tech blog. What you might not know is that often, I need to reply on sources that aren’t in English. Mac Otakara is a Japanese site that often has great information Apple’s supply chain. Consomac is a French Apple/Mac website with insight into European regulatory information that can hint at future products. Both are also perfectly good news sites. The problem? I really don’t speak French or Japanese. For me it’s just some English, a little Spanish, and a perfect mastery of Pig Latin (eriouslysay, it’say ierdway owhay easyay itay omescay ootay eemay).
Oh, sure, I taught myself a few phrases in a few languages, but when it comes to details, I can’t rely on my stumbling through French to find details for a post. So, I frequently toss sites like these into Google translate. I used to have a good Firefox extension for it, but you can’t use Firefox extensions on mobile, and official extensions no longer exist. My replacement still requires me to copy/paste the URL, which is obnoxious. I just want a one button translate! However, Safari may have this capability in iOS 14.
That’s good, iOS is the only place I still sometimes use Safari.
Translating Pages and More
A feature like this could fit in the context menu, like the mockup I made above. It’s not my best icon work, but you get the idea. Apple could also translate pages automatically. If you set a default language, it could detect the language of the page you land on, translate it, and load the translation. You may never even realize that a translation occurred.
Apple would either introduce their own translation service or use a third party, like Google Translate or Bing translations. It seems as though Apple’s already working these translation services into other apps as well, like the App Store. Apple may look to expand translation services across a variety of apps and perhaps even products. We could get built-in translation on macOS or even tvOS.
We often think of the internet as this great global connector. But the truth is, we’re still divided by language. We still so often only read the news or posts from people who were able to write in a language we understand. You’d think with our terrible secondary language education in the United States, our companies, like Apple, Google, and Microsoft, would make universal translation a priority. Perhaps after iOS 14, we’ll all be just a little bit more united.
Sources:
- Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac
- Mike Peterson, AppleInsider