Hey all AppleVis people!
After long hesitating and loads of trepidation, I finally decided to get myself a MacBook Air, and have now been having it for about three weeks. Wile there are still a lot of things that I don't know and some that I consider quite tricky, overall I'm really surprised with how smooth the whole adjusting process has been for me and I'm quite happy with it and reasonably comfortable using it for most things I do on a computer regularly...
Except for translating. And, being multilingual and a language learner, that's something I do A LOT. Like, I'm only now realising how often I translate something every day! On Windows, I used to use the Instant Translate add-on for NVDA, and then switched to an app called QTranslate and have stuck to it since. I really like how easy to use and minimalistic it is and that you don't need to distract yourself from whatever you're writing or reading whenever you need to translate a phrase or make sure you got some word right. So, because I don't know of any similarly good app for Mac, whenever I'm writing something that requires me to translate something regularly, I end up switching to Windows. I know that I most likely will need to stick to Windows for some things I do occasionally and that's absolutely okay, but I'm hoping to be able to rely on the Mac as my primary computer so my sister can become the full-time user of the PC, and that won't be an option if I don't find a viable Mac alternative. for translation.
Of course there's Google Translate website, but that's not quite as convenient. I've also seen ITranslate in the AppleVis apps directory, but it didn't sound particularly accessible, so I'm very curious if any of you are currently using it or have any experience with it. Have you perhaps figured out any workarounds for the accessibility issues that make it more usable?
I really like DeepL in general, and I know they have a Mac OS app which is apparently nicely accessible and I'll definitely be having a look at it, but my problem with DeepL is that it doesn't support two of the languages that I need, and one is a minority language so it'll probably take quite some time before they add it, if they will at all. And Apple's new-ish Translate feature doesn't even do my native language.
Do you use any translate app that you could recommend? Any suggestions/ideas highly appreciated. :)
By Gloomy_apple, 17 January, 2022
Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Comments
What is your main use?
What is your use case? For translating websites? School text? Other?
Use.
Most of the time, I use it for translating while I'm writing - emails, documents, blog posts - for either single words, or phrases. Also when I read emails from other people as well, or documents or similar, then I mostly use it for translating either single words, or phrases, or some larger bits of the text like sentences that I have trouble understanding. ANd sometimes I do translate websites or entire texts as well.
Try creating an Automator service
With an Automator service you can run it on any text.
Link:
http://andilabs.github.io/utility/translation/google/automator/os-x/mac-os-x/2015/02/01/mac-os-x-translate-by-google-any-text.html