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Strong language: Apple’s Translate app just got better

Translate is a fairly recent addition to Apple’s roster of pre-installed iPhone apps, and with iOS 16 it gets another boost. New languages and new features make the app even more useful and bring it closer to the long-standing translation kings, iTranslate and Google Translate.

6 new languages

Apple has added translation support for Turkish, Thai, Vietnamese, Polish, Indonesian, and Dutch.

That’s in addition to the 13 languages it already knew: English (US & UK), Mandarin Chinese (China mainland & Taiwan), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Portugese, Arabic, and Russian.

Translate camera

Open the Translate app’s built-in Camera to scan the world for foreign languages and translate them immediately. Simply point the camera at a recognized language and hit the shutter button. This will grab a photo and automatically overlay your primary language over the original text. So handy!

Scan this…

…and you’ll get this

You can pinch to zoom in and tap a text box for more information on each translated snippet. Here, you can hit the play button to hear how to pronounce the phrase, press Copy Translation if you want to paste the text elsewhere, or Add to Favorites to save the line for future reference.

Anything else?

Conversation mode now has two views to choose from, depending on whether you’re sat opposite your conversation partner or next to them.

Auto Translate means you no longer have to tap the mic button before responding. The app tracks everything automatically.

Finally, all the language smarts from the Translate app are now available systemwide. That means anywhere you can select a block of text, you can translate it too – without opening another app. All you need to do it pick the Translate option from the pop-up menu after selecting text.