Language Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Daily iPhone App: Lingibli

by Kelly Hodgkins (Feb 2nd, 2012)

Learning a new language can be challenging, especially when you're not in an environment where that langue is predominant. Lingibli is an iPhone app that'll bridge that gap by helping you learn vocabulary and basic phrases from native speakers. The app will teach you the top 100 words which ...

Daily iPad app: Converse

by Michael Grothaus (Aug 29th, 2011)

A few weeks ago I wrote about tips while traveling with your iPad. Today I want to tell you about an app that might be useful for those traveling to other countries where they don't speak the native language. Or, it might be useful once it gets fleshed out a little more. The idea behind Converse ...

WWDC Interview: Ultralingua

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Jun 20th, 2011)

Neil Ticktin (Editor-in-Chief, MacTech Magazine and MacNews) interviews Jeff Ondich of Ultralingua at WWDC 2011. Jeff was kind enough to tell us about their thoughts on the announcements at WWDC, and how it will affect their plans moving forward. TUAW and MacTech Magazine teamed up to speak ...

Rosetta Stone launches iPad app for well-heeled language learners

by Michael Rose (Jun 3rd, 2011)

The language-learning behemoth known as Rosetta Stone has launched itself into the iPad world with the new TOTALe Companion HD app, a supersized version of the iPhone TOTALe Companion that arrived earlier this year. TOTALe Companion HD delivers access to core Rosetta Stone v4 features on the ...

Google Translate native app available for iPhone, features speech-to-text and synthesized voices

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Feb 8th, 2011)

Last month Google came out with some new synthesized voices for Google Translate, and now the Google Mobile Blog has announced the availability of an iOS version of Google Translate, complete with voice-to-text data entry and synthesized speech. There's support for 15 languages via voice entry, but ...

iOS 4.1 quietly added Cherokee language support

by Michael Grothaus (Dec 24th, 2010)

The Associated Press reports that Apple has quietly incorporated Cherokee language support into iOS. Cherokee tribal officials were worried about the demise of the Cherokee language as the tribe aged and its younger members increasingly adopted the English language -- and iPhones. However, instead ...

Word Lens: an augmented reality language translator for iPhone

by Kelly Hodgkins (Dec 17th, 2010)

Word Lens is one of those apps that grabs your attention the first time you see it in action. Created by Quest Visual, it is an iPhone-based optical character recognition (OCR) application used for language translation. In real-world usage, it will translate a foreign language sign in an instant ...

Rumor: Adobe to sue Apple over SDK rules

by Mel Martin (Apr 15th, 2010)

This seemed like it was destined to happen; word out of Silicon Valley is that Adobe is planning a big lawsuit against Apple for keeping Flash off of the iPhone and iPad platforms. The final straw, apparently, was a change in Apple's SDK language prohibiting apps to be written with anything other ...

TUAW Tip: Character building with Mac OS X

by Sang Tang (Jan 21st, 2010)

I've previously demonstrated how to use LaTeXiT to create and display complex math formulas and other symbols, and thank you readers for the additional recommendations! While providing a means to display almost every imaginable existing symbol or character, a LaTeX-based solution may prove too ...

Vatican approves iPhone app

by Mike Schramm (Dec 25th, 2008)

The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications has approved an iPhone app called iBreviary, which is apparently a virtual version of the liturgical book. The app itself was created by an iTalian (and yes, pun intended) priest, and during a trial release in Italy, was downloaded 10,000 ...

iKanji release due Thursday

by Giles Turnbull (Jul 22nd, 2008)

Indie developer Rory Prior expects to release version 1.0 of his iKanji application this coming Thursday, he announced today. iKanji is a tool for anyone learning Japanese, and combines meaning, reading and writing training and tests. Over 2,000 Kanji characters and 20,000 example words are ...

Itching to learn Esperanto?

by Steven Sande (May 7th, 2008)

Hot for Hindi? Up for learning Uyghur? Wild about Welsh? LifeClever tipped us off to the fact that there are 926 free language training podcasts currently available in the iTunes Store. A quick glance at the available podcasts shows that you can learn 39 languages from Arabic to Yiddish with the ...

�bersetzen Sie das, bitte (Translate this, please)

by Brett Terpstra (Mar 18th, 2008)

For German users and English-speaking users with German-language needs, Philipp Brauner has made available the dict.cc Dictionary Plugin for Leopard, which adds the dict.cc vocabulary compilation to the OS X Dictionary. dict.cc is a community generated and verified English-German dictionary. The ...

Submerge: subtitles for your Apple TV, iPod, iPhone

by Brett Terpstra (Mar 3rd, 2008)

I've been looking for a good way to get a subtitled movie – with a SubRip (srt) file – into iTunes, my Apple TV and my iPod. I hadn't found much joy before this morning. Then I stumbled upon Submerge. I need to do some tweaking in the detailed preferences yet, but it seems to do the ...

Jisho: Japanese to English translator for the Mac

by Mike Schramm (Sep 18th, 2007)

I've watched as much anime as the next guy, but even I need a Japanese dictionary to figure out what those crazy robots are saying sometimes. Enter Jisho, a Japanese/English dictionary for Mac OS X 10.4 and higher. You can search in the Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana forms of Japanese, and also in ...