The Daily App: iSpeech Translator For BlackBerry PlayBook

There are many language translators out there for smart devices, but we immediately have become addicted to iSpeech Translator for the BlackBerry PlayBook.

A free download from the BlackBerry App World store, iSpeech Translator translates both written and spoken word from English into 17 other, different languages, from Spanish to Italian and German to both Traditional and Simplified Chinese. Just say what you want to say into the PlayBook, and within a few seconds the app’s text-to-speech and speech recognition technology translates it and speaks it right back. It’s almost like having your own United Nations translator in your pocket.

Importantly, it is straightforward and simple to set up, and navigation is easy: just hit a microphone icon before you speak, click “done” when you’re finished speaking, and wait until it translates the result.

We tried it and found it to be about 75-percent accurate with most languages; if the app mistranslates on the first try, you can try again until it gets it correct. The app is developed by iSpeech.org – an ISV that provides engines that other developers can use to speech-enable their own apps. For those who have a BlackBerry PlayBook, iSpeech Translator is really a nice app with little downside to having at the ready because it’s free.