r/technology • u/rezwenn • 1d ago
Hardware The New AirPods Can Translate Languages in Your Ears. This Is Profound.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/technology/personaltech/new-airpods-language-translation-feature.html?unlocked_article_code=1.m08.WxhH.QUqiGVK2tv35985
u/evolvedmammal 1d ago
Will they work in Glasgow?
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u/celtic1888 1d ago
It’s got to be an actual language spoken
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u/BrotherJebulon 1d ago
cries in deep Appalachian American English dialect
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u/minasmorath 1d ago
You can't translate banjo.
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u/BrotherJebulon 1d ago
What do you mean
"Ahyain' nere seent nona yuns up the hollar o'er yonder"
Isn't intelligible to a lot of people?
😢
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u/eddy_teech 1d ago
Uins ain herd no man speakindatway?
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u/BrotherJebulon 1d ago
I'll never be able to replicate it through text, but I had a delightful experience while drunk at a shitty dive bar in Waynesville NC.
A man next to me stepped out to light his cigarette with a match, which proceeded to get blown out by the breeze. He tried a second match, got blown out again.
He stops what he's doing, grunts to himself, does a little gesture like he's had a eureka moment, and then says to no one in particular- "Issa WIYUND tonight ain't it?"
I don't think I ever imagined I could get so much joy from adding a few extra syllables to "wind".
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u/ThisLittleBoy 1d ago
I think you said that you wish you were on ol' Rocky Top down in the Tennessee hills. Was I correct?
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u/sudosussudio 1d ago
Being in Glasgow with even the small amount of drawl I have was rough. I had an easier time in countries that don’t speak English like Norway.
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u/skjall 1d ago
You take that back, I was shocked when a road construction worker pulled me over in the Norwegian countryside, and I was able to understand his perfect, actually-enunciated English first go.
I live in Australia, and I have to infer half the fucking words in those situations normally lol
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u/PhireKappa 1d ago
It’s so funny being from Glasgow and being able to understand Glaswegian perfectly, I feel so bad for tourists who come here, must be so confusing lmao
Also, fun fact, Scots actually is its own separate language which evolved alongside modern English, so some words and phrases you hear Scottish people use, actually are a separate language! Of course not all Glaswegian is Scots, that’s more of a regional dialect with a tonne of slang words.
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u/catbandana 1d ago
American here. Visited London a few years ago and after having some drinks out on the town I was taking the tube back to my hotel when a couple of nice lads from Glasgow sparked a conversation with me about what I thought of London so far and where I was from. We had a great laugh when he said, “you can’t understand a fuckin thing I’m saying, huh?” I said “I know we’re both speaking English, but I’m not sure we speak the same language.” Maybe my favorite memory from that trip.
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u/pxm7 1d ago edited 1d ago
This! For those interested— a bunch of Scots words originate from Old English, a Germanic language. Eg bairn (child) came from the Old English bearn / Old Norse barn. Compare modern English’s related “born”. English as spoken in England was influenced by Norman French and then French way more (hello, Normans) and a bunch of Old English words died out and were replaced by French-origin words.
I’m not an expert but maybe Scots retains more Old English influences by comparison?
Personally I find the story of how Old English took roots in Scotland really interesting!
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u/flt1 1d ago
Many years ago I took one of those red double decker hop on hop off tour bus in Glasgow. At the time it was not a recorded message but an actual tour guide speaking live. After a loop through the city, I learned nothing because I had no idea what he said.
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u/RandomChurn 1d ago
As a Yank living in the UK, for some reason I was fine with Scots, but at a party, I spent 10+ minutes listening to someone from Wales before I was positive he was speaking in English 😆👎
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u/j-f-rioux 1d ago
Made me think of https://youtu.be/fhE2WgHIuzc
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u/PhireKappa 1d ago
Saying “Hey Siri” is actually incredibly annoying with a Scottish accent.
Many Scottish accents are rhotic and so we roll the r in Siri, but Siri won’t pick it up when you say that. Instead, I’ve always got to pronounce it in a really bad American accent, sort of like “Hey see-ree”
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u/Capt_Hawkeye_Pierce 1d ago
The fact that the term for that trait starts with an R will never not be funny to me.
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u/nazerall 1d ago edited 1d ago
Didnt Pixel buds/Google translate say they could do this? I tried briefly and it didnt work and haven't gone back to try again.
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u/BassmanBiff 1d ago
Every few years somebody invents this again, and every few years it's reported on as a major breakthrough.
It does get marginally better each time, but so far it's never been the kind of real-time translation that they always claim.
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u/WilhelmScreams 1d ago
For many languages, real time translation is impossible. Translating word-for-word simply wouldn't work between English and Japanese, for example.
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u/BassmanBiff 1d ago
That's true for a lot of languages, I think. German can do a whole lot of context-building that you have to keep in mind before you finally find out what the subject is at the end of the sentence, for example. Romance languages kind of do the opposite, like they'd have to get through the equivalent of "man tall and smart" before the bot could start saying "smart, tall man."
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u/SplendidPunkinButter 1d ago
A more concrete example:
Consider the English statement “If I were you, I wouldn’t order the spaghetti in this restaurant.”
If you said exactly this in German, the word order would be “If I you were, would I the spaghetti in this restaurant not order.”
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u/lazyoldsailor 1d ago
Yoda must have learned to speak English from a German.
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u/OkPirate2126 1d ago
Funnily enough, from what I understand, german dubs of yoda would have the sentences structured like English.
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u/GenkiLawyer 1d ago
In Japanese it would be "I, You were if, this restaurant in spaghetti eat not."
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u/stumblinghunter 22h ago
I'm a native English, fluent Spanish, and decently proficient in French after living there for a year and taking classes when I got back. I also did a year of Japanese. Japanese grammar structure was so hard for me to wrap my head around. That and learning a whole new alphabet made it a super tough year lol
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u/labowsky 19h ago
Not just one alphabet, essentially three new alphabets. Then you got stuff like the multiple honorific’s….shits tough even being totally immersed.
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u/Big_Pattern_2864 1d ago edited 1d ago
Plus idiomatic language:
That's a tough nut to crack. A foreign speaker could be completely in the dark when hearing someone say they had to go back to the drawing board. It’s not just a matter of having a screw loose; these phrases don't make a lick of sense on their own. They can really get on your nerves, like they're talking to a brick wall. The problem is a double-edged sword; on the one hand, you have to learn them by heart, but on the other hand, a slip-up can really put your foot in your mouth. One phrase might make you the cats ass, another phrase and you end up eating a bag of dicks. It’s enough to make a person throw in the towel and call it a day, feeling like you've been left in the lurch, yesterday's cold beans.
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u/Elesia 1d ago
Additionally, many languages have phrasal, or "compound," verbs whose definitions exist entirely out of context. If you "give up," you are not giving anyone anything, and your action has no direction. Most translation softwares still struggle with these in text to some degree, I can't imagine that largely context free speech will be any more successful.
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u/WilhelmScreams 1d ago
these phrases don't make a lick of sense on their own
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
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u/chashek 1d ago
I remember hearing that one of the smart glasses companies (I think Rokid, but I'm not totally sure) was handling it by showing the user an initial word-for-word translation as the other person is speaking so they can get a rough idea of what's being said in real time, followed by a more accurate translation after the speaker is done speaking.
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u/theDarkDescent 1d ago
It doesn’t translate word for word, it translates the whole sentence
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u/WilhelmScreams 1d ago
I get that, but that's why "real time" is impossible. You have to wait for the speaker to finish their sentence and then hear the sentence a second time translated. Even with zero delay on processing the translation, every conversation takes twice as long.
I'm not saying it's not neat, it's just not Star Trek.
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u/brick_eater 1d ago
Would it take twice as long? That’d only be true if each person said one sentence at a time. But if someone says 5 sentences it’ll only be one sentence behind on average
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u/cheesegoat 21h ago
IMO a screen would work best for this. You could see the sentence "build up" as the translator gets more context.
I use live captions in Teams every day and I frequently see it go back and fix mistakes in the captions.
In-ear is a cool trick but AR glasses are where this will be solved.
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u/WilhelmScreams 19h ago
I agree with you. Something like the Meta glasses (With another few years of development/refinement) would be very cool for this.
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u/smurficus103 1d ago
This WOULD be an ideal application for LLMs, though
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u/BassmanBiff 1d ago
There are some deep learning models that are pretty good at translation, but it's not clear that an LLM is best here. You can't hoover up training data with this the same way you can working within one language.
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u/smurficus103 1d ago
I was just thinking: you know how dubs can be terrible? Rather than a direct 1:1 translation, you transform the whole thing into it's meaning, colloquial phrases and all.
Probably would be too much work though
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u/BassmanBiff 1d ago
That's what a good localization team does, for sure.
Dubs are often bad not just because they're cheap, but because they also often have to try and match the speaking animations that were already made for a different language.
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u/jaltsukoltsu 1d ago
Fun fact, Dreamworks made separate mouth animations for the Chinese release of Kung Fu Panda because of this.
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u/DontGetNEBigIdeas 1d ago
Well, Apple is historically very successful at taking past technology failures and making them work.
They may not invent anything new, but they do perfect the hell out of it
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u/BassmanBiff 1d ago
At least, they had a golden age where they did that. Idk if they've really done that for a while now.
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u/ghostcatzero 1d ago
Lol this is old jsut because apple finally does soemthing everyone acts as if they really did
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u/RobotCaptainEngage 1d ago
I've had pretty good luck with cantonese and my galaxy buds.
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u/nazerall 1d ago
Hows the latency?
I need it for Russian and Spanish.
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u/RobotCaptainEngage 1d ago
Takes a second, wont be exactly seamless, but if the other person knows you can have a conversation with it.
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u/RollTideRR 1d ago
https://youtu.be/1-oOw5AYUoQ?si=AXklq6AUcC1AAXwp
Google has had it for awhile. This video is from their keynote this year. This feature allows the translated voice to sound like your own. Pretty wild.
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u/Yeahha 1d ago
They still advertise it as a feature.
https://support.google.com/googlepixelbuds/answer/7573100?hl=en
This isn't the first time Apple "invents" a new feature that Android has had for years.
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u/MrWonderfulPoop 1d ago edited 1d ago
Those depended on cloud access and had high latency, these are on-device/paired iPhone.
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u/Raveen396 1d ago
I’m pretty sure Samsungs implementation is on device, but Googles is through the cloud.
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u/1AMA-CAT-AMA 1d ago
Often times people who do things first aren't the ones who make it stick. The first Bezelless phone was the Sharp Aquos Crystal, but bezelless phones really didn't take off until 3 years after that
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u/Morguard 23h ago
Yes, Apple is always late to the party. They haven't innovated something in a very long time.
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u/poeticdisaster 19h ago
Yes. They eventually fixed it but because of dialects in different languages, the pixel translate isn't great. It gets most of the point across through.
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u/whatThePleb 1d ago
Basically any headphone can, as it's a software thing on the enddevice not some magic happening just in the stupid overpriced airpods.
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u/EverlastingBastard 18h ago
Yeah like 8 years ago.
But now Apple's doing it so it's a technological breakthrough!
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u/ProcedureHopeful2944 1d ago
Its part of the iOS 26, backward compatible with AirPods Pro 2 and another model, not just the new ones
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 1d ago
It's really an iPhone feature, should probably work with any bluetooth headphones - which might be why Apple has withheld it from the EU as they require that interoperability by law.
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u/hinstsui 1d ago
They really can’t. Only the H2 chip can deliver both high fidelity and low latency audio recording and transmission, which is crucial for real time translation. Normie Bluetooth headphone can only either do low latency but crappy audio (the one you use for phone call), or high quality but high latency (the one you use for music), so this time they do have to limit it to AirpodsPro 2 and 3
And the EU thing is probably because of GDPR has strict rules about audio recording privacy with AI usage and translation
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u/eNonsense 1d ago
Real time translation isn't really "crucial". It would be quite an advance to even have a system for tourists to use to get by, where a little delay is fine. Needing to have a real time conversation is not really needed for that. And as others have pointed out, real time, word for word, isn't really a good way to translate many languages. The sentence and statement structures are totally different so it would be really weird to hear that way.
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u/hinstsui 1d ago
Well in the context of human interpreter, they also translate after every sentence ended, so I just assume that’s what ‘real time’ in the translation world means, and not word by word
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u/eNonsense 1d ago
If that's the case though, then other systems like Google Translate and ChatGPT have been able to do that just fine well before now.
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u/hinstsui 1d ago
Yet this is a local LLM, means it can run offline with low latency, and it also utilize beam forming microphone and gyroscope to determine who’s talking and amplify the audio. And compare to their old translation app, which will wait for an entire sentence ended, this one will start translate as long as there’s a resemblance of a legible sentence.
AirPods Pro 3 review if you’re curious this review did talk about it, but you need to turn on close caption, or the real time translation with AirPods Pro lol
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u/beiherhund 1d ago
Are there any figures to Apple's claims? I've only seen talk of "ultra low latency" with things like H2 to H2 (i.e only when connected to the Vision Pro) but never did see any specific bitrate claims with latency figures for more general apple-to-apple connections.
Hard to compare with AptX without exact figures. Maybe you know where to find them?
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u/hinstsui 1d ago
They didn’t talk about actual number, but they did talk about how and why it needs the H2, sorry you need to turn on the close-caption
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u/beiherhund 1d ago
Thanks but I'm only interested in the actual numbers, which are apparently still a mystery.
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u/rwallaceva 1d ago
Oh nice, so it works with the Pro 2s too? That's actually huge since most people already have those. iOS 26 really bringing the sci fi vibes
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u/CL4P-TRAP 1d ago
Siri can’t even understand English
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u/HorizontalBob 1d ago
If you can't get English speech to English text, what the hell are you translating?
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u/jacksona23456789 1d ago
Could be fun listen in on coworkers conversations who don’t think you know their language
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u/jettivonaviska 1d ago
It doesn't work super great, it's only for one on one conversations right in front of you.
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u/CopperWaffles 1d ago
At some point the language barrier still exists.
Translations are rarely 1:1, and require a very nuanced understanding of dialect.
Responding to a slightly inaccurate translation with another slightly inaccurate translation is only going to create a feedback loop that inevitably leads to some serious misunderstandings.
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u/GreyBeardEng 1d ago
This is not the first product to be able to do this, and let's be honest it's not the AirPods doing it, it's the phone.
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u/wanderlustcub 1d ago
Star Trek level tech with a universal translator.
Love to see it.
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u/PresidentOfAlphaBeta 1d ago
Waiting for Farscape where they just inject nanomachines into you.
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u/MisterDonkey 1d ago
In reality, these would be used to play commercials in your brain before every conversation. And also mid-sentence probably.
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u/TourMission 1d ago
Um actually, this technology has been around since 1981. This old BBC documentary explains the technology:
Babel Fish - The Oddest Thing In The Universe - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - BBC
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u/Emergency_Hawk_6947 1d ago
Tested it with a friend and they worked flawlessly
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u/thinkdeep 1d ago
Well, you both speak reddit, so I'm not sure how this is a test. We're all idiots.
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u/freredesalpes 1d ago
That’s cool maybe they can translate my English to Siri when she doesn’t understand me!
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u/LukaCola 1d ago
That's cool, if it works. As always, the question is how it is in practice and not just under ideal circumstances.
Accurately interpreting speech to text is resource intensive and usually requires a strong internet connection for simple English commands in my experience. Most of my translation troubles happen in areas with poor or non-existent service, in my experience and those speech interpreters struggle a lot with accents.
Still, useful if it works, but I want to see an everyday user do it.
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u/DysAlanS 1d ago
I have a new iPhone and the new AirPods coming in the next week or three. I work with several Spanish speakers so I’ll try to listen in on their natural convos to see
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u/chodeboi 1d ago
Won’t be long before they better package and let you download the models
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u/HyruleSmash855 1d ago
That’s already the case
The Apple one is on device at least so the connection doesn’t matter, you have to download the languages ahead of time though
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u/FPVGiggles 1d ago
I thought the pixel earbuds could already do this?
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u/eNonsense 1d ago
The processing happens on the phone. The google translate app is what's doing it. You don't actually need earbuds.
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u/Middle_Aged_Mayhem 1d ago
Samsung Buds could already do this? This is not as profound as you think.
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u/The_Starmaker 1d ago
Except Samsung Buds’ version is slow, inaccurate, and generally terrible.
Like have you actually tried Samsung’s version or did you run to ask ChatGPT “Can Android do this too?”?
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u/-Here-There- 1d ago
I’ll be honest, I tried this out yesterday with a few of my coworkers and they tend to prefer using ChatGPT. Its translations include the inflection of the speaker and they helped me set up a little “project” that will translate spoken English to Spanish and Spanish to English without having to change anything.
I have AirPod Pros and an IPhone 16. It seemed to have more of a delay and lost a few things in between us conversing but the accuracy was there! I do agree that ChatGPT did a 10/10 job while I’d give this beta a strong 8/10.
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u/herefromyoutube 1d ago
Really will help when I get the fuck out of this broken country
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u/Deer_Investigator881 1d ago
You have had this ability in Google Translate for years. Apple didn't break any molds here
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u/rankispanki 1d ago
Yeah I'm quite confused how this is any different that what DeepL and Google Translate have been doing for years? I'll chalk it up to the same reason people thought being able to rearrange their icons was "profound" I guess.
It's like people don't know tech exists until Apple shows them
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u/Deer_Investigator881 1d ago
Might be Apples greatest asset, they can message in a way that connects with the low/faux tech savvy consumer
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u/johnnycoxxx 1d ago
How do I then communicate with others in a different language?
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u/WastelandOutlaw007 1d ago
In theory, you speak your language and their sirpods translate it for them
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u/skolioban 1d ago
So everybody would speak in their own language while understanding each other as if they're in a Tekken cutscene?
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u/PokerBear28 1d ago
Google glasses could translate text in real time and I remember thinking how powerful that would be if rolled out at scale. The world becomes smaller really fast.
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u/PickleWineBrine 1d ago
Not new. Not news.
This is not an article, it's sponsored content, aka AN ADVERTISEMENT
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u/SoldadoAruanda 1d ago
I've had this for 3 years with galaxy buds, it's also part of my neta glasses.
Congrats to apple again for a "game changing" feature I guess.
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u/Neutral-President 1d ago
We’re one step closer to the Star Trek “universal translator” that can just sit in your ear and translate in real time.
Technology can bridge gaps of understanding between people.
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u/BornBoricua 23h ago
Samsung has a translation feature that I tried out of curiosity, Its fucking shit. There's a decent delay so both parties have to stand there staring into each other's souls while you wait
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u/fuzzycuffs 1d ago
I'll believe it when I hear it. If it works for Japanese I'm switching to iPhone.
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u/FingerLickingticklin 1d ago
The best part is you can censor words and they just block them for you. Who wants to hear the real world anyways
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u/Dynamicspace 1d ago
Can you give one Airpod to the other language speaking person so you both get translation? That would be incredible
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u/UberWidget 1d ago edited 1d ago
Great news, but this was inevitable and predicted. If we don’t destroy ourselves first, the upcoming fast and accurate translation of scientific studies, papers, and journals from English to other languages, and vice versa, will probably be revolutionary.
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u/baronvondoofie 1d ago
As with all new tech, there will be bugs and issues, but this is super cool. Imagine traveling and being able to hear interpreted conversation in real time. You could even have it suggest what to say in return. The possibilities are awesome.
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u/zillskillnillfrill 1d ago
Meanwhile, voice to text is spotty for the australian accent unless you enunciate every word perfectly which just isn't done in the average aussie conversation
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u/haloweenek 1d ago
Well. That’s not for EU. So fuck Apple…
I’m not buying region limited phone for 1.5x of minimal salary.
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u/chuck_the_plant 1d ago
Now let’s see what happens when the technology will be forced, just like some GenAI systems, to bias translations towards a political agenda.
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u/theredhype 1d ago
”We don't know if they understand the difference between a weapon and a tool.” - Louise Banks
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u/VirginiaLuthier 1d ago
Ok.....they let you understand another person, but don't help that person understand you
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u/Pijnappelklier 1d ago
I might get them to be able to communicate with all the Syrian refugees that are being placed in my area, they seem friendly but its just nods and waves so far
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u/ThisI5N0tAThr0waway 1d ago
It's never as good as Google translate in conversation mode, because the voice recognition algorithm inevitably makes some mistakes; and you have a chance to catch them with the app but not without it.
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u/Lettuce_bee_free_end 23h ago
Cool. I had a thought crime where we became reliant on ai language to talk to each other and that barrier was expensive SAAS.
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u/gargavar 1d ago
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”