Microsoft Translator Beats Google Translate By Working Offline

By Jose de la Cruz | Apr 08, 2016 05:48 AM EDT

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You can now translate one language to another even if you're off-line by using the Microsoft Translator app for iOS devices. Microsoft launched this new app just yesterday.

Previously, the functionality of this app has been supported on Android as well as its rival Google Translate since it can also work offline. But here's where Microsoft has overtaken Google - its Google Translate can only work offline on Android.

"Until now, iPhone users needed an Internet connection if they wanted to translate on their mobile devices," wrote the team which developed Microsoft Translator in a blog post.

"Now, by downloading the Microsoft Translator app and the needed offline language packs, iOS users can get near online-quality translations even when they are not connected to the Internet," the blog post continued.

"This means no expensive roaming charges or not being able to communicate when a data connection is spotty or unavailable," the team added.

Microsoft also released its iOS version of the Microsoft Hub keyboard which was already available on Android last February. It is the company's first standalone keyboard application for iOS users, but it is not the much-speculated version of the Windows Phone keyboard.

This latest iOS Hub keyboard allows you to share Office documents faster even those stored in the cloud. It also enables your contacts to access your clipboard.

With regards to the Microsoft Translator, its translation technology depends on artificial intelligence just like the one used by the Skype Translator. The technology requires artificial neural networks on many data, like snippets, and then inducing them to make a guess about fresh data.   

There are around 52 supported languages of the translator. These include Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese Simplified, Croatian, Danish, English, Finnish, German, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Klingon (plqaD), Korean, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Queretaro Romanian, Serbian (Cyrillic), Slovak, Spanish, Thai, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Yucatec Maya and many more.

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