I have been using this app for a number of years and it always did an adequate job of bi-directional translation to help me as I learned Spanish. About a month ago I discovered the Group Conversation functionality and it has been a complete game-changer. I teach ESL classes to a diverse audience with five languages present and it initially did not look like it would be possible to have a multi-language class. The Group Conversation allows everyone to hear in their original language as they learn new material and then we can all practice in English. I have been able to use it in four class sessions so far and after working out some initial kinks, it works great. The only thing I would ask for from Microsoft at this point is better written installation and set up procedures. Initial setup with a large class is cumbersome but I am not going to rate this lower than five-stars for that piece. The functionality rocks. Well done.Update: One feature that has been changed in the new version is the removal of the two buttons in conversation mode, one for each language. It is now only auto-detect. This has not worked as well as having two buttons when it comes to accuracy. I prefer the option for either method, like it used to be.

Update Jan 2024: The ability to delete your translation history is finally added! Split screen is back, sizable, and rotatable! Good user interface improvements and better options in settings! Nice update, guys!Two bugs I found: #1: I can’t get auto-speak translations to work. #2: In split-screen mode, both user microphones are on my side of the screen. One should be on the other person’s side. hopefully these will be fixed soon.March 2023: I really like the new ability to tap the microphone and have it continuously translate, without it shutting off the microphone every time the speaker pauses. That said, the split screen option should also still be available, as it is not practical to explain to someone speaking a different language that they should download the app and initiate conversation mode on their own phone. It’s a good feature, but should be optional, not mandatory! Also, please add back in the ability to delete all history at once. I do not wish to individually delete hundreds of translated messages. [UPDATE: Devs say this will be added back in] Also, there should be a way to do one-way translations. Sometimes the app incorrectly hears Japanese language as English, and tries to translate it into Japanese!

I use it to find characters left out of the 2nd addition Collins while translating the other…. Well I will keep that to my self… though it all started with a Websters for 7 dollars ever English speaking person should buy and start at “letter” the problem with the binding in the 2 simpler books is an issue I may need to buy them twice. This app can do much more than the two books. But I enjoy the ancient characters considering the keyboard can distinguish them better. The knew characters are PC but the old characters are better at guiding. This program recognizes both and uses a slightly different font to help recognition of characters one may find on on the street as a business owners personal touch. One time I was looking up characters in mandarin to see how it was said they surprised me with a addition to it that only a teacher would say.The attributes of one’s hand weighting may account for the inability to compute a translation for my personal righting but the “cost accountant” probably said hold on that.

This was my go to translator app, I raved about it, but I just received an update yesterday and it is absolute crap now. It’s not even the same app, everything is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! It’s not as easy to use now and I can’t copy and paste the translation like I used to. I used to be able to communicate with my friends by copying translated messages and texting them, amazing, but apparently that was too convenient and made way too much sense, so Microsoft, as usual, had to change everything and ruin a great piece of software, and why? Didn’t it take you guys a lot of time and money to build the previous version m? Anyway translations can no longer be copy/pasted now. Too add to the devastation the app used to have a split screen that you could just talk into your phone and it would translate it facing the other person, amazing idea, the best I’d ever seen, but Microsoft being Microsoft, had to change that too. Why?!?! I’m just glad I don’t drive a Microsoft car or the steering wheel would probably change from side to side annually. Just when you learn to use the software they change it. I don’t even know what this company is thinking anymore, not much, apparently. Honestly I think they just F stuff up to look busy and keep their jobs. I’m downloading my new translator app right now. Don’t even bother with this one. It’s a shadow of its former glory.

I just got this ten minutes ago, but I want to say how good it is. I also got another translator where most features are paid for by subscription (which I probably won’t do because I don’t travel), but this Microsoft app is totally free and no ads or in app purchases, including the camera scan option!! I can’t say much else because I just got it, but from what I’ve seen, it’s terrific. And I previously had another app that also had limited translations and so on... The thing I find annoying (and yet I understand) is the Monthly part of subscriptions. I’m fine to pay just once like seven dollars or whatever, but the fact that it costs monthly (even when you don’t use it and its hard to unsubscribe) is what makes me avoid it. At the same time I get it, they got to make money to improve translation. I would if I used it more... but this one is fine because its free and Microsoft can and does afford it. If they can’t you could switch to Google but I don’t like it as much...

I moved to Switzerland and I used to use google translator for everything since it had image translation feature that came very handy when in restaurants, or in streets. However, after using Microsoft translator, I never went back to Google app. First off, MS translator does much better job of pronouncing the words or a phrase by slowing it down for each retry. Secondly, when translating through image capture, it puts the words in the original image. Google and other translators bunch them all up in an unformatted paragraph which make it unclear where a sentence ends or starts. Very nice work by MS. The only improvement I would recommend is to have the landscape feature work. Currently, everything must be in portrait.

Edit: this app has got better and worse. The problems with dark mode have been fixed.However, the big issue now is that this service has become very unreliable. The conversation is regularly ended prematurely by the server. To be clear, the app is not crashing, my browser (on which I also join) is not crashing. The meeting is being ended at the server side. It has got much worse over the last 6 months. In today's 2 hour meeting it ended the meeting 4 times. Each time I had to start a new session.I use Microsoft Translator on my desktop regularly and it’s great. However, this app has a few flaws. Firstly, with my iPad in dark mode it is extremely hard to see the text I type. Next, the app has not been written to function side-by-side with another app on an iPad. That feature was introduced years ago. Finally, and most significantly, if you temporarily toggle into another app this app closes the conversation and you lose everything. I’m on an M1-powered iPad Pro. This is a supercomputer. This app shouldn’t have any memory problems on such a device, it should be able to stay open and in the conversation in the background while I toggle to another app.

Whenever I translate to and from Hebrew (true example), the punctuation gets completely messed up. Oftentimes I’ll hit the double arrows button to translate the results back to English to check. Whenever this happens (and this issue has improved some over time with updates), if there was a period at the end, one magically appears at the beginning as well, and so on with question marks, exclamation points, etc. (though not with commas). Also, several words in both Hebrew and other languages aren’t recognized and make radical transformations, including both common and proper nouns. In one incident, I repeatedly tried to translate a sentence containing “Galilee” (a region in northern Israel), and when I checked, “Galilee” had become “the cylinder!” I tried over and over with the same results. These were not the only times there was a glitch in the system, leading me to distrust Microsoft Translator with languages other than the Romance Languages (Spanish, French, etc.), with which I encountered much less error.

I thoroughly dislike this new update they made 9 months ago. The app is actually harder to use and less seamless than it was before. The app no longer translates as you type and If you accidentally mistype a word or sentence, you have to rewrite the entire thing over again! Switching between languages is actually more difficult and it no longer gives you similar words/ multiple translations for the same word. Some default translations provided aren’t what is used in conversations, so the feature that showed multiple ways of saying a word was actually really useful. You also can’t change the reading speed for translated text anymore. These were not issues in the previous version. How can you call it a new and improved version when it’s more trash than the last?? I used to love this app but it’s gone completely downhill. They just removed all the features that made it awesome to use. I’m extremely disappointed and am deleting it. Would not recommend this app anymore.

Once again Microsoft can’t leave a good thing alone. The most recent update took away all the best features, like being able to copy/paste and especially, especially the split screen!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WTH?!? I also noticed the font size on the translations, especially for language like Hindi or Korean, is smaller makes the translation very hard to users to read. I depended on this app when traveling through Italy, India, and Greece and have used it religiously for years now. It took away all the stress of being stranded in areas where little English was spoken. I needed it when I found myself in the emergency room in Croatia, and had no one to help me explain my problem and fill out the paperwork. I would have been lost without it. The split screen is so helpful when shopping or even renting a car. I’m sick to have to delete it and hopefully find something similar. Didn’t you all do any user research before you updated???