Hands On: iTranslate Voice HD For iPad

I’ve had the chance to play around with iTranslate Voice HD on my iPad for the past two weeks in preparation for the App Store release this past Tuesday. I have tested and used numerous translation apps on my iPhone over the years, a lot being free and many performing decently well. If you have a translation app that you use now, that you really like, I urge you to test out iTranslate on either your iPhone or iPad. If you are planning on traveling or would really like to fine tune your foreign language skills, this app will come in very handy.

Like the iPhone counterpart, iTranslate Voice HD for the iPad is powered by Nuance speech recognition and works pretty much like Siri does on the iPhone. With a touch of a button you are can speak the source language and are shortly given a text/voice response in the output language of your choosing. iTranslate Voice HD will translate 31 languages in both directions as well as offers some text input only translations for a handful of other languages.

iTranslate Voice HD is a simple yet beautiful app. Utilizing the gigantic screen on the iPad, you can actually sit down with someone in a personal setting and have a conversation back and forth in different native languages and see the entire conversation unfold before you. I found this to be one of the nicest features above using the iPhone version.

As far as the recognition goes, I did come across a few hiccups along the way, but for the most part it picked up on what I was saying. If you have an issue, or want to keep the translations to yourself, you can always pop open the keyboard and type away. During speech, you can change the voice to either a male or female, as well as slow down the recording to help yourself annunciate the translation. You can even speed it up, if you want to create a helium induced translation. You have the option to change the settings to auto speak the results, as well as repeat with just a shake of your device.

Another great feature iTranslate Voice offers is the ability to look up definitions and meanings for common words & phrases, as you can see in the included pictures. This comes in handy if you spoke a word, and actually meant a different meaning. You can also share straight from the word by holding it and touching the ‘Share’ button, giving you access to Tweet, text, Facebook and e-mail the results to all of your friends.

As with Siri, iTranslate Voice HD does require a network connection, whether that is WiFi or an AT&T/Verizon data plan. So remember this when you are on the go with your iPad. If you have both an iPhone and iPad. I might recommend the iPhone version for heavy traveling. The iPad might just seem awkward in real-life situations when you would need a translation. The iPhone just seems more travel friendly. But if you are planning on brushing up on your Arabic, iTranslate Voice HD for the iPad will really come in handy and give you an almost text-book style learning on the beautiful Retina display.

Sonico GmbH is offering the app at an introductory price of $.99, and I really have to say it is well worth it. Such a great price for an amazing app. I do hope moving forward we see some more language/dialect support, but the options right now are definitely note worthy. If you plan on traveling, I’d get a full list of supported speech input/output languages to see if it really something you could use on the go.

Not only is the app $.99, but they are also offering iTunes gift card giveaways for the first 10 days of the apps existence, so you still have a couple days to try and win one!

Head on over to the App Store and grab yourself a copy and let us know how you like it!