Text reactions reaching some, and maybe all, of my Android contacts in Spanish

[Rafagon]

Some, or perhaps all, of my reactions to texts that my Android contacts send me (👍🏻, ❤️, 👎🏻, etc.) are showing up on their end in Spanish (i.e., "le gusta" instead of "liked").

I think SwiftKey may be the culprit. I use SwiftKey the majority of the time, and i have it set to auto-correct and offer predictions in both English and Spanish, because I routinely use both languages.

I also send and receive texts to contacts who don't speak Spanish. None of those have brought the issue to my attention.

Below are two screenshots, one is of a text exchange with a bilingual friend who informed me that my reactions are going through in Spanish, the second is the same as the first but I zoomed in on the part which shows my language setting.

You can clearly see that I have English set to my primary language, and iOS's explanatory text reads, "Apps and websites will use the first language in this list that they support."

I assume SwiftKey is an app. So why isn't it using English words to express my reactions as iOS's explanatory text which I quoted above suggests it should be doing?

A third screenshot I'm including informs me that sure enough, some Android recipients may receive the text version of the reaction.

I'm totally okay with that—but I would like them to receive the English text version of my reactions, not the Spanish ones.

Any ideas on how I could fix this?

 

[JBinPDX]

No idea, but wanted to add that I asked Siri to read a text from an iPhone use to me, and Siri translated it into German first. Neither of us speak German and the text was in English.

 

[Rafagon]

No idea, but wanted to add that I asked Siri to read a text from an iPhone use to me, and Siri translated it into German first. Neither of us speak German and the text was in English.

Maybe this is just one example of those AI "hallucinations" they keep talking about. I'm joking, but maybe Siri will eventually hallucinate as more artificial intelligence is injected into it.

 

[Rafagon]

For what it's worth,



However, none of the three sources that "AI Overview" claims it used (the three little icons I highlighted in yellow) to formulate its response contain the word "Spanish" in the entire text of the articles.

The AI Overview gave me hope when I read it, but why don't its claimed sources contain the word "Spanish"?

I give up. My friends who don't speak Spanish and who may be receiving my reactions to their texts in Spanish are just going to have to learn Spanish until this little issue gets resolved. 😂😂

 

[TimFL1]

Apple implemented RCS UP 2.4 from 2019, which does not include reaction support (was added to the spec with UP 2.7 in June 2024).

If reactions work for contacts on Android, it‘s the iPhone reaction SMS fallback at work. Apple only ever sends these basic reaction texts (e.g. "Gave thumbs up to XYZ") and no actual reaction, that‘s the individual chat app taking these texts and converting them to reactions.

As for the language these texts are sent in, it‘s probably iOS picking a random language / your set locale. I had the same issues with my Android contacts, until Google seems to have pushed out an update that improved their parsing.