Language learning and live translation · Android
Learn the phrases. Translate the rest.
A phrasebook that teaches you to say it yourself — the real phrasing, the pronunciation spelled out, and a warning wherever there’s a trap. And when you need more than a phrase, the app translates a full conversation out loud, or reads a sign through the camera.
Coming soon to Google Play
The app is built and in testing now. It will be listed on Google Play shortly — this page will carry the link the day it goes live.
A phrasebook, not machine output
Machine translation is good at meaning and poor at manners. Every taught phrase here is written out by hand instead.
The phrasing people actually use
Not a word-for-word translation that is grammatically correct and sounds like nobody alive. In Portuguese, “you’re welcome” isn’t a translation of those two words at all.
Pronunciation you can read
Spelled the way an English speaker would say it, stress marked, so you can read it off the screen and be understood — no phonetic alphabet to learn first.
The traps are flagged
Greek “ναι” sounds like “nay” and means yes. In Bulgaria the head-shake means yes. In Russian, Arabic and Polish the word changes depending on whether a woman or a man is speaking. You’re told before you get it wrong.
Hear every phrase
Tap any phrase and the phone speaks it in the right language, so you can copy the sound rather than guess at it.
Practice mode
Hide the answer, say it from memory, then reveal and hear it spoken. The quiet, repeatable way to make phrases stick.
Organised the way you’d need it
Greetings and courtesy, travel and getting around, emergencies. Search any phrase in either language and hear it on a tap.
And when a phrase isn’t enough
Learning takes time. Some conversations happen today.
Talk, and be answered
You speak, the phone says it in their language. They speak, it says it back in yours. The screen is split so each person reads their own half the right way up.
Point the camera at it
Signs, menus, labels, forms, notices on a wall. Hold the camera up and the translation comes back on screen, and can be read aloud.
An earpiece, if you want one
Pair a Bluetooth earpiece and your half arrives privately in your ear while their half plays out loud on the phone speaker. Nobody has to lean over a screen.
Type it when it’s loud
In a noisy bar, on a worksite, or when someone would rather not speak, type instead. Same translation, same voice, no microphone needed.
Works with no signal
Download a language once and it keeps working with no data at all. Useful abroad, where roaming is exactly when you need it most.
59 languages
Spoken and camera translation from Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic through to Urdu, Bengali, Swahili and Vietnamese.
Why hand-written matters
Anyone can generate a phrasebook. The result reads fluently and quietly gets the manners wrong — the politeness level, the word that changes for the speaker’s gender, the false friend that means the opposite of what you expect.
These are written one phrase at a time, with a note wherever a learner would otherwise walk into something. That is slower to produce and the reason the list grows steadily rather than all at once.
Taught, with pronunciation
Including Afrikaans · Arabic · Bengali · Bulgarian · Chinese · Croatian · Czech · Danish · Dutch · Finnish · French · German · Greek · Hebrew · Hindi · Hungarian · Indonesian · Italian · Japanese · Korean · Malay · Norwegian · Persian · Polish · Portuguese · Romanian · Russian · Serbian · Slovak · Spanish · Swahili · Swedish · Turkish · Ukrainian · Urdu · Vietnamese
Who it’s for
Built for the moments where getting it slightly wrong actually matters.
Travelling
Learn enough to be polite before you go, and have the translator for everything you didn’t plan for.
On site and at work
Crews that don’t share a first language. Give instructions, check they landed, and pick up each other’s words along the way.
Family and community
Talking properly with in-laws, neighbours or grandparents — and learning enough of their language to try it yourself.
Coming soon to Google Play.
This page will carry the download link as soon as the listing is live.