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Everything New With Translation in iOS 15: System-Wide Support, Live Text Translation and More

Krizoitz said:
MM/DD is more practical, it’s like putting the hours before the minutes, you are grouping what matters most first. You don’t need to group the 21st of January with the 21st of September, but you do generally group the 21st of January with the 22nd of January. Thus:

1/21
1/22
is more practical than
21/1
21/2

Meanwhile Fahrenheit is more practical than Celsius. 0-100F is the range which most people spend most of their time living in. Meanwhile -18c to 38c (or -20 to 40 if you want to go to closest whole number) has less granularity, you can easily differentiate type of temperature in Fahrenheit (in the 70s vs in the 40s) compared to Celsius. Having the key points of water at 0 and 100 is clean mathematically but has very little practical value. How often are you doing math based on those numbers in your daily life?
“But what about science!” you say.
They use Kelvin anyway. And what’s practical for science vs. what’s practical for everyday use are not the same.

So while meters and liters and grams all make more sense than inches, cups or pounds, that doesn’t mean the metric system is superior in every way.
Click to expand...
Us Europeans know that when we reach 0°C the roads will be icy, when the temperature is negative we might sk.
10° wear coats
20° lose costs
30° wear shorts
40° stay indoors!

The only reason I feel sorry for Americans is the fact that every measurement seems to rely heavily on fractions, quarts, eighths, sixteenths, thirty twoooths
The decimal system is sooooo much easier to engage with.
 
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Krizoitz said:
MM/DD is more practical, it’s like putting the hours before the minutes, you are grouping what matters most first. You don’t need to group the 21st of January with the 21st of September, but you do generally group the 21st of January with the 22nd of January. Thus:

1/21
1/22
is more practical than
21/1
21/2

Meanwhile Fahrenheit is more practical than Celsius. 0-100F is the range which most people spend most of their time living in. Meanwhile -18c to 38c (or -20 to 40 if you want to go to closest whole number) has less granularity, you can easily differentiate type of temperature in Fahrenheit (in the 70s vs in the 40s) compared to Celsius. Having the key points of water at 0 and 100 is clean mathematically but has very little practical value. How often are you doing math based on those numbers in your daily life?
“But what about science!” you say.
They use Kelvin anyway. And what’s practical for science vs. what’s practical for everyday use are not the same.
Click to expand...

I agree that grouping by month has more sense than by day. Hence, the logical way should be YYYY/MM/DD, as you would group by year first. As usual, you should know which year it is, so you just say MM/DD. But again, you know which month it is, so Europeans start by the day. As European, I am used to it, but I do prefer MM/DD after some time living in the US.

On the other hand, Fahrenheit does not make any sense to me. With metrical system, at 0º water freezes, at 100º water boils. There are 100 steps in between, equally distributed. ¿At what temperature does water freeze? At 32F. It boils at 212F.

We will let distances and weights for another discussion, because that is science fiction.
 
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Krizoitz said:
MM/DD is more practical, it’s like putting the hours before the minutes, you are grouping what matters most first. You don’t need to group the 21st of January with the 21st of September, but you do generally group the 21st of January with the 22nd of January. Thus:

1/21
1/22
is more practical than
21/1
21/2

Meanwhile Fahrenheit is more practical than Celsius. 0-100F is the range which most people spend most of their time living in. Meanwhile -18c to 38c (or -20 to 40 if you want to go to closest whole number) has less granularity, you can easily differentiate type of temperature in Fahrenheit (in the 70s vs in the 40s) compared to Celsius. Having the key points of water at 0 and 100 is clean mathematically but has very little practical value. How often are you doing math based on those numbers in your daily life?
“But what about science!” you say.
They use Kelvin anyway. And what’s practical for science vs. what’s practical for everyday use are not the same.

So while meters and liters and grams all make more sense than inches, cups or pounds, that doesn’t mean the metric system is superior in every way.
Click to expand...
The month could or not be more practical than the day, it depends on the context. There is no way to say.

However, a day is shorter than a month, as a month is shorter than a year. Like with hours, minutes and seconds, there is a logical progression.

Water freezes at 0 C and boils at 100C. Since water is paramount for us and it defines the environment, having a progressive and easily defined scale is more rational for everyday usage than some random scale that could or not be more common depending on your location. For scientific matters, there is the Kelvin which starts at absolute zero and uses the same incremental scale as the C.

Honestly, the imperial system is plain gibberish.
 
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827538 said:
Agreed, this with AR translate for street signs or menus would make this app perfect. I've nearly completely removed Google from my life, they just need a bit more work with this and manual offline maps and they will have feature parity.

I just saw it sort of has AR translation but it would be better if it was done live.
Click to expand...
In the article, it says you can do live view in camera app, but I didn’t figure out how. It scanned the text, made it readable and selectable, but with no option to translate.

I also want to get rid of the Google translate app.
 
As usual, it depends.
I am a scientist (MD, PhD) and in my research< I use the metric system daily.
But, its easier for me to imagine a pint of ice cream, a quart of milk or a gallon of gasoline than a liter.
 
cmcbhi said:
As usual, it depends.
I am a scientist (MD, PhD) and in my research< I use the metric system daily.
But, its easier for me to imagine a pint of ice cream, a quart of milk or a gallon of gasoline than a liter.
Click to expand...
I’m an engineer, and defining mechanical designs in inches is pure madness. Take into account that unless you use 10^(-3) dimensions we’re talking about 2,54 mm increments, which is impractical for virtually everything.

The same applies to other imperial units as far as I’m concerned.
 
I am quite satisfied with Apple practical implementation of text translation. I just wish it would be, say as option, possible to put translate button directly into keyboard and rapidly speed up access to the feature. It is really time consuming especially as select whole text in some app is annoying process where you several times get corrector suggestions before menu.
I use translation often among variety of languages.

And here is is where it fails completely. 11 languages. C’mon Apple. Hope it wont take you 5 years to bring it on par with other translation services. I use, flirt or learning up to 7 languages but 3 including my mother language is missing.

Language support for many features are still very limited in iOS. after 15 years. We still do not have keyboard prediction QuickType. It is embarrassing.

MacRumors said:
In iOS 15, translation capabilities are expanding further and can be used system-wide. You can select any text anywhere in iOS 15 and choose the new "Translate" option to translate it into your preferred language.
Click to expand...

But this statement is very misleading. This my dream it would work like that. But you can select text only in editing text field not anywhere like some incoming message in chat or any other text anywhere. Hope Apple is working on translate SDK so developers can implement it widely. Same as autotranslate feature.

MacRumors said:
Live Text

iOS 15 adds a Live Text feature that lets your iPhone detect text in any image or photo on your device. You can select text in images and it works like any other text on your iPhone.
Click to expand...

I have little usage for this mostly and it require XS or higher so....

Same i never used any of other features especially because of insufficient amount of languages so have to use Yandex extension or Google app
 
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cmcbhi said:
As usual, it depends.
I am a scientist (MD, PhD) and in my research< I use the metric system daily.
But, its easier for me to imagine a pint of ice cream, a quart of milk or a gallon of gasoline than a liter.
Click to expand...
Most sensible things are described by mass. It’s easy enough to imagine getting 500 g of ice cream. A quart is about a liter so there’s really no conceptual change there. I don’t see the challenge with liters of gasoline. Apart from filling and fuel efficiency when would you ever think about them? And those would just be changed to liters on the display (like they already have internally) and efficiencies given in L/100 km.
 
Please re-read my last sentence. The one that contains “….easier for me…..”’
I say tomāto, you say tomahto
 
THIS! This alone would have me upgrade to iOS 15! I’m really big on learning new languages and this is pretty much immersion to take offline training/learning to another level -especially for those with nobody at home to practice with. I just wish a unique name was given along with its icon - BOTH being the same as Google’s Translate iOS app. Argh!

boak said:
A missed opportunity to implement AR live translation
Click to expand...
???
Like reading lips would be a good thing, when Siri and human beings still have issues understanding those speaking the SAME language with accents! What you propose is till years away.

Honestly I don’t think using AR for language translation or turn by turn directions on a smartphone is “IT”. Are we to HOLD up our iPhones and Advertise for Apple (with logo on the back) JUST to find out to Turn Left or Right or East, West ?! Doing the same and zero’ing in a person while they speak to you seems very invasive in their personal space not to mention distracting and somewhat rude. might as well hold a hand to they face, lol.

No most of the information to translate is on your phone/device, using audio - like our ears is best, even if you may not understand a thick accent someone else potentially has for example.


TheDailyApple said:
I recall there being a handwriting feature for practicing other languages.

View attachment 1820837

(from the keynote)
Click to expand...

!!! I somewhat recall this, but I don‘t Apple themselves showed this, i could be mistaken.
 
DeepIn2U said:
Honestly I don’t think using AR for language translation or turn by turn directions on a smartphone is “IT”. Are we to HOLD up our iPhones and Advertise for Apple (with logo on the back) JUST to find out to Turn Left or Right or East, West ?! Doing the same and zero’ing in a person while they speak to you seems very invasive in their personal space not to mention distracting and somewhat rude. might as well hold a hand to they face, lol.
Click to expand...
That's such a niche scenario to discount an idea.

There are so many scenarios where AR live translation would shine. For example, have you tried buying some food at a grocery store in a foreign country but can't because you can't read the language? AR would help by superimposing the translated text onto the packaging.
 
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boak said:
That's such a niche scenario to discount an idea.

There are so many scenarios where AR live translation would shine. For example, have you tried buying some food at a grocery store in a foreign country but can't because you can't read the language? AR would help by superimposing the translated text onto the packaging.
Click to expand...
That’s a great scenario … but there is already MyFitnessPal and from what I gather - I could be wrong - there is still a barcode on food products or if in China QR Codes.

Again it’s not about discounting a technology for the case of doing so … it’s understanding although it can be applied, is it really needed, does it replace and provide a better solution to what’s existing.

Now in your example above … for shopping food in a foreign country for a meal and selecting items … AR would beat a simply Bar/QR code can to get product details and nutritional information. However if you’re out shopping to buy food items to make a meal, you already started before getting to the shopping location what you need to buy, as in your already have the items needed on a list 😉 which is in a language you understand.

VERY rarely do people go out, to buy a food item, and have no idea what they’re buying. 😉

Again great idea, it’s applicable … just in practice would determine it’s best use scenario. 😀 Thank you for helping see another side. But for Maps+turn+turn for pedestrians … no. For the same reason AR for Driving turn by turn directions from the phone just doesn’t make sense: distraction and personal safety. Holding a phone up at an intersection at eye level for Maps turn by turn to choose where to walk? Anybody walking by could bump that phone out of your hands, OR by you turning into them Also the road is right there … anybody see more than 2 people at a traffic light an 1 the jay-walker take a step on the road before the light indicates safe to walk and the other persons just mimick even though they’re still looking for safety? That safety is gone with a phone in your field of vision. I’d rather vocal turn by turns or a legend that is specific.

Turn right on Yonge street, walk 15meters to your destination.
(Nice but it’s making us dumb)
Turn west on Yonge street, walk 15meters to Eaton Centre.
(The latter is more specific, helps re-inforce people to know their compass directions and with GPS/Glonass/etc there is a slight directional delay so if you turn facing North on Yonge Street in Toronto at Queen, Turning Right in the first example points you East away from Eaton Centre). going the wrong way on busy sidewalks just to get a correction and pivot to walk the other way … not ideal.
 
DeepIn2U said:
That’s a great scenario … but there is already MyFitnessPal and from what I gather - I could be wrong - there is still a barcode on food products or if in China QR Codes.

Again it’s not about discounting a technology for the case of doing so … it’s understanding although it can be applied, is it really needed, does it replace and provide a better solution to what’s existing.

Now in your example above … for shopping food in a foreign country for a meal and selecting items … AR would beat a simply Bar/QR code can to get product details and nutritional information. However if you’re out shopping to buy food items to make a meal, you already started before getting to the shopping location what you need to buy, as in your already have the items needed on a list 😉 which is in a language you understand.

VERY rarely do people go out, to buy a food item, and have no idea what they’re buying. 😉
Click to expand...

I often go to grocery stores to pick up interesting food items I see when visiting a foreign country. Not sure whether others do the same when travelling.

I do agree that AR for maps is not a very neat solution.
 
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Rafagon said:
I don't see how the drop-down menu for language selection is better than the current way.

But I do think they should add translation of metric system to Imperial system equivalents where appropriate.

So if someone tells me "you need 2000 liters of water to bake that cake," it will tell me how many gallons that is.
Click to expand...
Big Cake!
 
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cmcbhi said:
Please re-read my last sentence. The one that contains “….easier for me…..”’
I say tomāto, you say tomahto
Click to expand...
Yes, I hear you saying that one thing’s easier for you than another but I’m really just trying to understand where your difficulty is. Is it because you don’t have enough IRL examples of liters?
 
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