There are two misleading things in the title of this review: it's not 3 minutes or less, and the app isn't a universal translator. Currently the app translates between 4 languages -- English, French, Italian, and Spanish -- and it doesn't do very well at that. It does translate English to [insert other language here] well, but going the other way is a lesson in patience. We tried a few different phrases and most of them were laughable (like putting "Halo 3" instead of "Hola, como estas") and I agree that my accent and grasp of foreign languages is a terrible mixture but I thought I was pretty good at enunciating.
A better name for this app would be "Speaking You Can't Speak Other Languages". This may be due to Android's voice recognition software and how it trains itself to recognize your voice. If I was using an Android phone and spoke another language then it could be possible that it wouldn't recognize my English. I can't be sure because I don't know anyone who speaks a foreign language and uses it on their phone daily to test that theory.
Speaking Universal Translator (with 2 spaces) is USD$1.99 in the market and I would say that's probably a dollar ninety-nine more than I would be willing to pay for this (if I wasn't blowing my money on apps to review them for you guys). If you definitely MUST have a translator app for your Android phone then this is a good one but beware that it may take a few times repeating yourself to get it right.
- Rory Rezzelle's blog
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