Life can be tough for monolinguists at times. While English is often seen as the internet’s de facto lingua franca, serving as a cross-cultural bridge, the fact remains many languages are used across the digital spectrum which can lead to communication glitches.
There are, of course, many tools designed to help circumvent such issues, such as Google Translate. And then there’s neat new tools such as Inapp Translator, which promises to alleviate the friction from understanding online texts inked in unfamiliar tongues.
Inapp Translator: Frictionless translation
The Android app’s core raison d’être is to make it as easy as possible to translate text into your preferred language without closing the active application – this could be an email, mobile website, document, or any third-party app that lets you copy and paste text.
You simply select the text you wish to convert, copy it to your clipboard, and then tap the floating Inapp Translator window to read the translation, which comes courtesy of Microsoft Translator. You can dismiss the floating ‘T’ button by long-pressing it.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
You can set the source language to Auto Detect, or manually choose from 45 tongues yourself. While the free version comes with ads, you can fork out £7.08 (GBP)/$7.43 (USD) for an upgrade to remove them – though this does seem a little on the punchy side given the app could be a little more slick and design-focused, while it was also prone to the occasional crash in our tests.
That all said, Inapp Translator shows a lot of promise, and it would be great to see this given a design refresh, and have the crashing issues we experienced ironed out.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.