Hi All,
There's a new translation app just released in the U.S. iTunes Store
named "Trippo VoiceMagix" by Cellictica that just went on sale for a
promotional price of $6.99 (regular price is $24.99). I don't know how
long this price will last, but many current reductions are timed to
the WWDC 2010 this week. The link to the app is:
Trippo VoiceMagix by Cellictica ($6.99, regularly $24.99):
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trippo-voicemagix/id372332910?mt=8>
I'll paste in the list of features from the app store description, and
then go on to give a detailed description of its usage with VoiceOver:
<begin excerpt>
FEATURES
- Voice input in US English
- 27 languages supported (Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese Simplified,
Chinese Traditional, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek,
Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian,
Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Pashto, Romanian, Russian, Somali,
Spanish, Serbian, Thai, Urdu)
- Accurate speech recognition by Nuance
- Natural sounding voice output for Chinese, Dutch, French, German,
Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish,
Thai
- Adjustable speed for voice output
- Mode selection: Speech-to-speech, Speech-to-translated text only or
Speech-to-recognized text only
- Send the translation by email
- Full license includes upgrades to new features, like additional
languages, sharing features etc.
<end excerpt>
The app is accessible and has some really interesting features for
people who are interested in using their iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad with
different languages, and some unique features that extend use (with
spoken translation and text) to languages that are not even currently
supported on these devices. First, it's powered by the Nuance engine
that is used by Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search, so one input mode
is to speak rather than type in the text you want translated, and let
the app transcribe it by voice recognition. Because the engine is set
to recognize U.S. English, this app appears to only be available in
the U.S. iTunes Store at present; I checked the Canadian store, and
couldn't find the app. Second, you can have the app speak the text
that you entered. (This only works now if you either typed or spoke
your input entry with English selected with the "Translate from:"
button. You can translate to and from a very large number of language
combinations, if you're just working with text, and don't use the app
to speak the entries.) Third, for thirteen of the twenty-five
languages selectable with the "Translate to" button, you can have the
app speak the translated results. The spoken translations work for a
number of languages with non-Roman scripts, including Chinese (both
simplified and traditional characters), Greek, Hindi, Japanese,
Russian, and Thai. Languages like Hindi are not even supported
otherwise on the iPhone. Nor are (in just text mode) Urdu, Hausa,
Persian, and Pushtu (which are some of the other "Translate to"
options).
Voice recognition mode is pretty good, and fairly fast, since it's
powered by the Nuance engine. The app has a simple layout with a
labeled "Translate from" button, a "Translate to" button, a text box
area for input text to be typed in, and just beside it to the right, a
Microphone button labeled "BTN underscore Mic" for voice input. There
is similarly a translation text box for the results, and buttons for
"Translate" and "Listen".
There are a few VoiceOver specific notes that may be useful. Although
layout is slightly different between portrait and landscape
orientation (with portrait mode having the text entry input above the
translation output, while in landscape mode the text box for the input
language is on the left, and the output translation on the right),
both screens have a button at the bottom center of the screen: "BTN
underscore arrow underscore show". Tapping this button reveals three
buttons at the bottom of the screen: "Help", "About", and "Settings".
"Help" brings up a screen with a tutorial on how to use the app. The
"Settings" button lets you select the rate of the speech returned from
translation, and also to select the mode of operation. By default, it
is set for speech to speech, which means that you speak your text (in
English) and get spoken results (for languages that support it).
However, you can also just type in your text (in any language), and
use the buttons to run a translation to another language and/or press
the button to have the text spoken. (You can even paste in text to
the translation field and press the button to have it spoken, although
working with these fields without having the keyboard get in the way
is a bit buggy in the initial release.)
The other major issue for VoiceOver users is that the language picker
wheels do not indicate which output languages support speech. You
should refer to the pasted description, or the developer's web page
for the list of translated languages with spoken output options:
Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese,
Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai.
In terms of output text usage, iPad users may find, in addition to the
app's support of languages that are not even supported on the iPhone,
that they get text output for languages whose keyboard input is not
currently supported on the iPad: Bulgarian, Traditional Chinese,
Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Serbian, Thai, Portuguese, Danish, Romanian,
Norwegian, and Polish. You can copy and paste the text into your
favorite notes app (e.g. Simplenotes for additional synched access
through your computer, or even the default Notes app). Also,
according to the Multilingual Mac web pages, apps like Pages on the
iPad will correctly support these languages when pasted in, even
though the keyboard text input for the iPad doesn't currently support
these languages. A recent post on the Multilingual Mac pages indicates
that some of this language support (e.g, for Hindi, which you can get
both spoken and written text output with this app), will still not be
in the iOS 4 release.
Let me try to summarize the features of this app in the context of
what else is available in the app store. If you're looking to use a
dictionary, translation app, or voices in a standard supported
language, such as French, Spanish, German, or Italian, you have access
to many more apps and some really good voices. The Acapela voices
(sold as Infovox on the Mac) are available via in-app purchase for
apps such as Voxtrek (GPS navigation) and Speak It! (general text to
speech). If you're looking for voices, text, or simple translation
with a well-supported language, then you can probably use other apps.
Even for languages with non-Roman text entry, like Russian, I can find
translation apps that use the high quality Loquendo voices that will
do a better job (even though the app is mostly inaccessible to
VoiceOver and requires requires fiddling to navigate to the one part
of the app that is usable). However, many other languages,
particularly languages that do not use Roman alphabets to input text,
are not similarly supported in the app store and are especially not
well-supported through VoiceOver. And these apps do not support
speech recognition for translation entry. What is unique about this
app is its support for both spoken and text translation output for a
wide variety of languages, including several which do not use Roman
alphabet characters for input and/or do not have full or even any
support on the iPhone/iPad. The developers, a Finnish company named
"Cellictica", are distributing versions for multiple platforms,
including the Android, hence the reason the languages are not limited
to the iPhone or iPad complement.
I am aware of Mark Taylor's coverage of Jibbigo's translation apps in
his Candleshore Blog (January 2010 entry, "Bring the Star Trek
Universal Translator to your iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch"; February
podcast episode 46, "A Real-Time Bi-Directional Spoken Language
Translator for your iPhone 3GS" demo of the Spanish-English
translation using VoiceOver). Jibbigo tailors its bi-directional
translation apps for specific language combinations (originally,
English-Spanish and Japanese-English; just recently released, Chinese-
English and Iraqi-English). The Jibbigo app is priced between $25 and
$30 per language pair and runs entirely on your device. This has the
advantage of allowing you to use the app locally on your device, but
also puts the processing load there, while additionally running
VoiceOver. Given the price, and current operating system/processor
limitations, I probably wouldn't try the Jibbigo app out myself yet.
It's a more interesting possibility for the iPhone 4G release. Trippo
VoiceMagix relies on a server connection (just as with Dragon
Dictation), and you're currently limited to short spoken phrases (but
longer text). However, the transcription accuracy appears to be high,
at least for U.S. English voice input. Trippo's voices for translated
text are OK, but not spectacular. I don't recognize the source of
these voices, but they're different from what the iPhone uses (and
would certainly have to be for the languages the iPhone doesn't
support). I'd be curious to learn the accuracy of the Jibbigo bi-
directional translation for different spoken voice inputs and accents
(for Chinese, for example), but not enough to buy the app <smile>. I
note that they don't describe whether the output text uses Simplified
or Traditional Chinese characters (a selection option of Trippo
VoiceMagix), but that this also adds PinYin.
In conclusion, the Trippo VoiceMagix app will appeal to a specific
minority of VoiceOver users who are interested in language
translation, and who also (at present) have access to the U.S. App
Store. This is obviously a first generation release, with some awkward
features (such as having input text not remain in the window when you
return to the app, or having to fiddle the way you dismiss the
keyboard if you just want to paste in text to the translation window
and have it spoken). However, I think this is a very promising app,
and well worth the $6.99 (or even the $9.99 at which I purchased it).
Note that the default list price really is $24.99, and the $6.99 that
appeared yesterday is not likely to last very long.
Finally, in order to give list viewers an alternative take on the app,
here's a link to the AppShouter review that appeared when Trippo
VoiceMagix was first released:
<http://www.appshouter.com/trippo-voicemagix-iphone-app-review/>
They give a separate description of the interface and the way in which
you can mail translated text. Their summary:
<begin quote>
All things aside, this app is a great value for all of the features
that it contains. Especially if you are really planning on using more
than one of the 27 languages in this app is definitely worth it! If
you’re still curious and reading this review I’d encourage you to
check out Trippo VliceMagix by Cellictia.
<end quote>
You can also check the Cellictica developer page for more information
about this app, and planned other app releases:
<http://www.cellictica.com/>
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
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