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Google Launches Google Translate For iPhone

Submitted by Edward Kirk on August 9, 2008 - 11:52am.
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Google has just updated their mobile iPhone-formatted web interface to include Google Translate. The new interface was created by Google employees David Singleton and Allen Hutchison during their 20% work time that the company requires them to spend on personal projects. Just like the normal web version, Google Translate for iPhone allows translation both two and from any available language, right from the iPhone.

Allen Hutchison explains how it came about:

A few months ago I was planning a vacation to Austria and Italy. I knew a few words and phrases in German and Italian, but that was about it. So I looked around for some portable language dictionaries. I thought Google Translate was great, but the web page didn't work that well on the iPhone. So I teamed up with David Singleton, a fellow engineer in our London office, to build an iPhone interface for Google Translate.

The new web app supports all of the same languages as the full-scale version because it uses the same AJAX Language API. It also holds on to your previous translations in a list stored locally so you can access them even when you're without a data connection. He adds that he tried out an early version, and it worked well, but of course keeping an eye on your data charges is a good idea:

If you're wondering about data costs, I found that I could get between 200 and 400 translations in 1MB of data download. Although we don't charge for this service, your carrier may charge for the data usage so be sure to know what your roaming rates are. For my plan, I found that I could translate 400 phrases for less than $10 when roaming internationally.

You can access Google Translator for iPhone by visiting Google.com in your iPhone's web browser and selecting the "more" tab, or by going directly to translate.google.com.

[via Google Mobile Blog]

Submitted by frannyc28 on August 10, 2008 - 6:40pm.
This is the funniest crap I have even seen. I read the info you guys posted here and then I visited the translator website. Just to find out that the whole thing doesn't really work. I have no idea who programmed the Spanish translation portion of the website but Google Translation will NOT help you with Spanish. So if you are planning to use it to go to a Spanish speaking country and you expect not to be laugh at DO NOT USE google translation.