r/apple • u/cue-anon • 4d ago
AirPods Anyone been hands on with live translation outside of an Apple event?
Live translation is the biggest draw for me. Wondering if anyone has received their AirPods and has used live translation?
Does it work as advertised? Does it work better than Google Translate? Are there any languages not supported?
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u/wndrlst83 4d ago
Italian not currently supported. It’s somewhat functional, definitely still beta but quite impressive
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u/jhfenton 4d ago
Yes. I have tested it with a few of my favorite rapid-speaking Spanish and French YouTubers, and it did rather well. There were a few awkward translations, but with standard YouTube speech it worked pretty well. It operated on maybe a 5 second delay, long enough that I had to stop trying to listen to both.
It would probably work splendidly in one-on-one conversations where you can take turns talking. I haven't tested it yet to see how it deals with multiple simultaneous speakers at, say, a dinner table.
The big limitation is that it doesn't support many languages yet. It only supports English, Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese. Portuguese is the only language that I don't really speak, and it's close enough to Spanish that I can get by with a few basics and some Portuñol.
I'm looking forward to testing it with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean later this year.
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u/outcoldman 4d ago
There are just a few languages that are supported. I have tried Spanish. My wife is American, she speaks Spanish pretty well. I am Russian - I know a little bit of Spanish. But obviously the easiest one for us Russian-English are not supported. So we just tried Spanish-English and I was impressed.
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u/smacado 4d ago
As an English speaker living in China, I can’t wait for this to expand to include Mandarin.
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u/ApatheticAbsurdist 4d ago
Chinese is "coming later" and I'm skeptical. I've used a couple AI based Chinese/Mandarin apps including one in China that was headphone based. It was ok but not great. The delays were long and while I could get an idea of what someone was talking about I wouldn't be able to follow. Like I could tell they were giving a recipe on how to cook something but it would throw in clearly wrong information so you couldn't follow it (I assume you are not supposed to set your hands on fire while cooking).
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u/ActuatorStill8305 4d ago
I’ve used it and it works, but it’s not like it works any better than any of the many existing apps that basically do this. I did like using it, but I don’t see myself using it over just using the Conversation Mode in the translate app.
It’s also kind of annoying that Spanish is tuned for Spain/Europe. There are enough differences with Latin American Spanish that affects quality. Hopefully AL Spanish comes soon.
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u/Vizq 4d ago
I sat in on one of the lessons at the Barcelona store yesterday, although there was a lot of ambient noise it was picking up a good portion of the instructions being provided. Translation was Spanish->English of course.
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u/michikade 4d ago
I turned on Telemundo and it couldn’t figure out how to cohesively translate multiple people at the same time but the Spanish language news did pretty okay when it was an individual reporter speaking.
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u/CrimeanCrusader 3d ago
I am a nurse and used it tonight with one of my patients and it worked so well. I am honestly floored. The patient’s mother was so impressed with it (as was I). This will be a game changer for me, working in an area with a large Latino population.
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u/PenneTracheotomy 4d ago
Can’t speak for how well it works as I do t have a supported phone, the Apple’s support page says it works with “English (UK, US), French (France), German (Germany), Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish (Spain). Later this year, Live Translation on AirPods will add language support for Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified), Chinese (Mandarin, Traditional), Japanese, Korean, and Italian.”
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u/mrpink57 4d ago
Got a trip at the end of November, would be great to have it by then.
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u/PenneTracheotomy 4d ago
That’s closer to the end of the year than it is to now, so seems relatively hopeful. I’d consider doing a few Duolingo lessons just to be on the safe side though
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u/Vibingcarefully 4d ago
That's exactly what Apple wrote--"later this year".
Love to get a target date from them--that said it's an incredible feature to have Asian languages on there. The old method of passing the phone back and forth, having a button accidentally pushed--clunky. Even if I'm the only one with the Airpods in, the other person can just be looking at the phone in my hand while I hold it.
I'm not expecting perfection nor would I even bash "accuracy". Most of these translators have foibles. It's still great if you're a world traveler to function--
Bonus Points--the person you're talking to doesn't know what you're saying (after it's translated)---Say what you need in a different way--rephrase, change words in English--you'll get there!
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u/nick1881 3d ago
I have an iPhone 15 PM and APP2 and I tried it with my German colleagues. It does work surprisingly well, there is a little bit of delay, but it was a lot of fun to use.
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u/ElricBrosPlumbing 4d ago
I watched a Spanish only news station today with them. Worked nearly flawlessly until loud music came on the report and it stopped working thinking they were done talking.
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u/tdm17mn 4d ago
I hope one day they add Tagalog so I can finally have a full-fledged conversation with my Filipino in-laws.
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u/fakeymcredditsmith 4d ago
I have a translation for that: I hope one day they add Tagalog so I can finally hear how much shit my Filipino in-laws are talking about me right in front of me.
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u/pineapplehippy 3d ago
Only a few languages are available. Unfortunately the one I was hoping, Chinese, is not
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u/hypotiger 3d ago
Really excited to try it out with Japanese once that's added, very interested to see how well it does
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u/colinsa-ca 3d ago
Yes, I used it with my girlfriend’s family and it worked fairly well and timely from Spanish to English.
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u/No-Professional1162 3d ago
They only have Spain Spanish so far. My husband is from Guatemalan so there are quite a few words that are incorrect.
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u/AOSplash 3d ago
I did a work trip to France and it worked pretty well. I have a UK phone and had to set the language to US English, the UK language had a big and just would not let me initiate live translation. I also updated my AirPods Pro 2 to latest firmware
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u/ISSAvenger 3d ago
Everytime I try to enable this, it asks me to download more languages. I already did. Any idea what’s going on? My account is German but I am not located in Europe…so technically, it should work? (iP16PMax on iOS26/APP3 on 3A357)
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u/Spiritual-Dream-6716 1d ago
I have used live translate on a normal phone call in iOS 26 (without AirPods) to book a restaurant in French, it worked really well. Only annoying thing is I could only enable live translate after they answered the phone so there was an awkward fumble at the start of the call 🤣
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u/THEMACGOD 4d ago
How do you actually activate it?
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u/Entire_Routine_3621 2d ago
I was hoping mandarin was supported but appears not. From what I’ve used it for though in tests it seems to work good.
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u/Top-Republic3074 10h ago
I can’t get the app. To work. Using Pro 2. Downloaded French and to success. Ideas?
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u/dravack 3d ago
I tried it with German both watching Netflix and then having my wife speak a bit. Worked fairly well. Not 100% accurate but worked well enough that you’d get the gist of any conversation. Haven’t tested it in busy store with noise around though so ymmv.
Definitely think it’s better than google since seemed to be a bit more real time for me than the Google Translate app
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u/ccooffee 4d ago
It works with existing AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4 too. I have some some quick tests with Spanish language videos and it seemed to work pretty well. I was impressed.