4 translation apps are the talk of the town

Google Translate offers translation services for more than 60 languages, both speech recognition and text. The best part is it works and it’s FREE. Each translation Google Translate provides includes a written phonetic translation in addition to the audio recording. I found phonetic translation is key for translation apps. You’d think that would be a common feature to include but apparently not…

How it Works: Using this app you can translate in and out of using typed words or using your devices microphone to speak your phrases. The speech recognition feature is extremely useful as I could type in (or say) what I needed translated and then show the person my phones screen with the translation, they could then respond verbally and I could easily view their response on my phone while also hearing it translated in English. This was particularly useful when we were traveling in Russia since the alphabet is different; they couldn’t easily type in a response given the need to switch keyboards on the phone.