OneWorld Translator review

Mark Mackay

We review OneWorld Translator, an iPhone app that aims to break down language barriers at the push of a touchscreen

Published on Oct 28, 2009

There is believed to be well over 6,000 spoken languages spoken in the world today.

With the world being made smaller thanks to cheaper travel costs and more and more people going traveling for months at a time, having a translator app on your iPhone may prove invaluable before you know it. For this reason, we downloaded OneWorld Translator to see if it was up to the challenge.

The app can translate from and to about 40 languages including Albanian, Arabic, Galacian, Japanese and Korean.

The selection is very global rather than being localised to just a couple of continents. The languages can be selected via scroll wheels which makes it easy to see what languages you're translating from and into.

Inputting the scripts you want translated is easy enough and the text input features the usual editing tools such as copy and paste and the magnifying glass.

t's essentially the same as writing a text message. Once you're done, you can hit translate and and the appropriate language version of your words will appear in the bottom window. The interface that shows the copy isn't the most attractive example of app design we've seen, but it does the job.

To test the accuracy of the app we opted for a few simple phrases and then checked them against online phrase books to check the chromatics and spelling were correct.

One the whole the accuracy was very good. The occasional word was not in the correct position but the important thing is that you can get your message across. The fact that you can just show someone the words means that you don't have to worry about making a numpty out of yourself with the pronunciation too.

The app also features a phrase book. The page opens with the word 'hello' written next to the different flags of the languages it can translate into.

Pressing on the word will then open up it up in the translation window. There is a search bar at the top to search for you own phrases but it doesn't seem to work with this version of the app.

We tried many phrases but couldn't get any to open up which is a shame.

However, we felt that the OneWorld Translator did provide value for money and a good range of languages translated with decent accuracy.