This is how you can use Siri to change your language to French, Spanish, German, Italian or Mandarin Chinese by speaking to your iPhone or iPad.
With iOS 11, Siri can translate US English into the above languages to help you communicate with someone, even if you don’t speak the language.
One catch is that Siri is only translating from English at this point. The person you are trying to talk to cannot speak French, Spanish, German or Mandarin Chinese on your phone and cannot get an English translation that you can understand.
How to Translate with Siri
- Press and hold the home button or say “Hey Siri” to activate Siri
- Say, “How do I say ‘your phrase here’ in Spanish?”
- You will see and hear how to say it. You can tap replay to play it so someone can understand what you want.
- You can say translate beer into German or express your translation request in this way.
Use Siri to translate into five languages.
That’s all it takes to use Siri as a translator on your iPhone. As we warned, you can’t translate it back into English, so this is only as useful as getting simple answers or replying to something you understand but can’t speak.
Hopefully a translation to English will be made in a point update to iOS 11 or iOS 12. We also hope to see other languages added over time.
If you need two-way translation on your iPhone, Translate App for Text and Audio or Google Translate. Google Translate app can use your camera to automatically translate signs and text
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