Joe Hindy / Android Authority
Translation apps are actually fairly important. They help people communicate without a human translator or spend months learning a language. Most use cases involve translating something you see on social media, although most social media sites have built-in translations now. Generally speaking, most translation apps are used by infrequent travelers, students looking to study a new language, and translating a menu or something in a restaurant. We have a whole list of outstanding translation apps below.
We want to give an honorable mention to Dictionary Linguee (Google Play). It’s a very good translation app. However, it hasn’t been in active development since 2017, so it’ll likely have issues on modern Android devices.
The best translation apps for Android
- BK Translate app
- DeepL Translate
- Dict Box
- Dict.cc
- Google Translate
- Innovative Apps translation apps
- Klays-Development translation apps
- Microsoft Translator
- Naver Papago
- Reverso Dictionary
BK Translate apps
Price: Free
BK Translate is a developer on Google Play with a variety of translation apps. They have dozens of languages, including popular ones like Spanish, Arabic, German, Indonesian, French, and many others. Each app works the same way. It translates between whatever language it supports and English. It works with typing, voice, and handwriting. Additionally, it works with both words and full sentences. The UI is simple and easy to use. That’s about all these apps do. They are simple translator apps. They are also all free with advertising. Unfortunately, you can’t pay to remove the ads.
DeepL Translate
Price: Free
DeepL Translate launched in 2022, and it’s already one of the best translation apps on mobile. The app works in 29 languages, including Chinese (Simplified), French, Spanish, German, Japanese, and many others. In terms of UI, the app looks good, and is highly functional. You can input text or use the microphone to hear someone talk. The app translates what it sees or hears. There’s even a camera function to read menus or street signs if you need it. It competes well with Microsoft Translate and Google Translate. The only drawback is the sheer number of languages those other apps can handle.
Dict Box
Price: Free / $6.49
Dict Box is a multilingual dictionary. It supports dozens of languages, including English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hindi, Romanian, and others. Some of the features include complete offline support, word corrections, audio pronunciations, pictures, flashcards for memorization practice, and cross-device syncing. It also includes camera features. The design is decent and easy to use. There really isn’t a lot not to like about this one. Some features are locked in the free version, but are unlocked in the premium version.
Dict.cc
Price: Free / Up to $8.99
Dict.cc is a multilingual dictionary app and translator. It works with dozens of languages, including French, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and others. This one only seems to work with single words. However, it’s a good way to translate between two languages. The app features offline support, auto suggestions, audio pronunciations, and more. It should work perfectly fine for the languages it supports. The free version includes about a dozen languages. The premium version comes with the entire collection of supported languages and it removes ads.
Google Translate
Price: Free
Google Translate is probably the very best translation app on mobile. It supports over 100 languages online and over 50 languages offline (via typing). It also translates stuff with your camera like menus or street signs. The app also supports handwriting, voice input, and typing input (obviously). Finally, it can even translate a full conversation in real-time if needed. This is the gold standard on mobile. Aside from the occasional goof or bug, there isn’t much wrong with it. It’s also free with no in-app purchases or ads.
Here are more app lists to try out:
- 10 best Android learning apps to increase your knowledge
- 15 best eBook reader apps for Android
Innovative Apps translation apps
Price: Free
Joe Hindy / Android Authority
Innovative Apps is a developer on Google Play. They have a variety of bilingual dictionary apps. They also work well as translation apps. The apps all have the same features. That includes full offline support, auto suggestions, pronunciations, voice search, synonyms, antonyms, and word games for memorization practice. There are dozens of languages. You simply find the one with the language you want and it translates between that language and English. All of the apps are free with advertising. We wish we could pay to remove the ads, but it’s a relatively minor complaint.
Klays-Development translation apps
Price: Free
Klays-Development is a developer on Google Play much like BK Translate. They have a bunch of bilingual translation apps. There is also a single app with all of the languages included with dozens upon dozens of languages. The apps all feature a simple UI. You also get typing and voice inputs for translation. All of the individual translator apps have advertising with no premium version. The one app with all of the languages costs $1.81 and contains no other ads or in-app purchases. Frankly, we recommend the one with all of the languages. It’s the best deal
Microsoft Translator
Price: Free
Google Translate gets a lot of love. However, Microsoft Translate is also pretty good. It supports over 60 languages. That’s less than Google Translate but still more than most. However, all of them are available offline. The app also supports two-way conversations (with up to 100 people at once), phrasebooks, pronunciation guides, Android Wear support, and alternate translations. It’s actually surprisingly good. Plus, it’s entirely free with no in-app purchases or ads as far as we can tell. The UI is even pretty decent. If Google Translate is giving you trouble, Microsoft Translate might be the answer.
Naver Papago
Price: Free
Naver Papago is a translation app by Naver, a very popular search engine in South Korea. It’s not all that different from Google Search and Google Translate. Anyway, Naver Papago supports translation between 13 languages. You can translate text, images, and voice with real-time translations. Additionally, it 100% works offline and it can even recognize things like handwriting and websites. It’s not quite as broad as something like Google Translate or Microsoft Translate. However, we like the UI and the features all work. Some seem to have trouble with the website translation feature so beware of that.
Reverso Dictionary
Price: Free / Up to $12.00
Joe Hindy / Android Authority
Reverso Dictionary is another popular multilingual dictionary. It’s not quite as good as Dict.cc or Dictionary Linguee. However, it’s a viable option if those don’t work for you. It supports dozens of languages. Additionally, the app features example sentences, audio pronunciations, word games for memorization, offline support, and more. The app has the occasional connection bug. There isn’t much else wrong with it, though. It’s not half bad, although we would recommend other apps on this list before we recommended this one.
If we missed any great Android translation apps, tell us about them in the comments. You can also click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists. We also have a massive list of translation apps, multilingual dictionaries, and phrasebooks linked just below for a variety of languages if you want them.
- Spanish to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
- French to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
- German to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
- Italian to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
- Romanian to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
- Arabic to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
- Persian (Farsi) to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
- Hindi to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
- Russian to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
- Chinese to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
- Japanese to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
- Korean to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
- Indonesia to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
- Filipino (Tagalog) to English dictionaries and phrasebooks!
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