Here’s the result I got from the newest app on our list, DeepL Translator: This video from Oh La La, I Speak French perfectly explains the difference between the two pronouns. This isn’t a problem in everyday life (and I would even encourage you to use on to sound less formal) but could be problematic if you need to speak French in a more formal setting. As I explained in the section on Reverso, this isn’t extremely important in most cases, but if the dialogue is a work of fiction where the filler word might give insight into a character or situation, it could be problematic.Ī bigger issue is using the more informal on to say “we” in one of the sentences of the dialogue. The first is a small one in this particular context – the omission of the filler word Euh. There are three notable issues with this otherwise pretty good translation. Here’s the translation I got from Bing Microsoft Translator: The robotic voice pronounced most of the text correctly but sounded far from natural, with a stiff voice and strange overlaps in sounds. I was less impressed by this text-to-speech functionality. In addition to its ability to translate, Google Translate offers a text-to-speech service you can use to hear everything pronounced. Here’s how Google Translate translated the dialogue:īonjour Madame, avez-vous des plats végétariens? You can then see the source of the translation and decide whether the source is trustworthy enough. Instead of automatic translations, Reverso Context offers you a selection of translations from the web. On the other hand, one good point for Reverso is that it also offers an interesting service called Reverso Context.

This is a perfect example of how machine translation often lacks a human touch. But if this were a dialogue in a work of fiction, or a transcript, that “Euh” might have been a way to get a little insight into the speaker. That may not matter if you just need to understand the idea behind a text or are focusing on the grammatical parts of a sentence. The app has improved since I first reviewed it in an earlier version of this article a few years ago.Īlthough not an exact copy of the original, this dialogue is perfectly correct, although it left out the “Euh”. When I copy/pasted the dialogue into Reverso, here’s the translation I got: I honestly think it will be hard to beat. The ChatGPT translation is slightly less formal than the one used in French Together but perfectly valid. This is a great translation, very authentic and exactly the kind of dialogue you could hear in a French restaurant. While not a typical translator, the new AI tool ChatGPT is often used as one so I thought I would give it a whirl and see how it performs when asked “Please translate this into French:”īonjour Madame, avez-vous des plats végétariens ?īien sûr. Now let’s see how the most popular French translation apps translated it.

Hello Madame, do you have any vegetarian dishes?īonjour madame, est-ce que vous avez des plats végétariens ? The question I wanted answered was: if you were in a French restaurant and needed a quick translation, would these translation apps help you or embarrass you? I chose a dialogue from the French Together app because it contains lots of everyday vocabulary, the kind of vocabulary a French learner going to France would need. How well do popular apps translate a simple dialogue? It’s supposed to be vastly superior to stars like Google Translate. Released in 2017, DeepL is the newest translation app on our list, and it’s already making waves. Microsoft’s answer to Google Translate, this app is similar to its rival in terms of quality of results. Google Translate’s results can be perfectly correct, but no machine translator is perfect, and the app has also become famous for its errors. Launched in 2006, this is probably the most famous translation app out there. In addition to translations, the site also features other language resources. What to use instead of French translators? Which free online translation apps did I test?įor this experiment, I chose four of the most popular free online translation apps: ReversoĪround in some form since 1998, Reverso is one of the most popular free online translation apps.

Line app english to french translator