During the WWDC 2020 keynote presentation, Apple announced radical changes to Siri in iOS 14. Cupertino is also introducing a brand new app to help foster communication between people who do not speak the same language.
New Features Coming to Better Utilize Siri
We learned today that Siri is handling 25 billion requests each month globally. Because of that explosive growth in usage, Apple is bringing new functionality to Siri in iOS 14. With the new Siri features, your digital assistant will be better able to help you.
As we learned, iOS 14 brings some amazing updates to Messages. Siri adds another layer to these improvements. In iOS 14, you’ll be able to send audio Messages as well as dictate your texts better. Even better, all of the dictation will be handled right on your device. That will help protect your privacy, while also allowing you to dictate messages even when you’re out of cell or Wi-Fi coverage.
The New Translate App
On top of the improvements to Siri in iOS 14, we get a new Translate app, Translate will help improve your communication with people who don’t speak your language. Translate will help you talk to friends, business contacts, and even people you meet while you travel.
The Translate app will listen to you the person you’re talking to, and then generate a translation for you. We aren’t just talking about a word-for-word translation either. Translate will process what you’ve said and translate it into conversational language.
Like dictation within Siri on iOS 14, all of the translation happens right on your device. The app works without sending any data to Apple or anybody else. This means better privacy and, again, offline support. Translate will support 11 languages at launch. Supported languages include:
- English
- Mandarin Chinese
- French
- German
- Spanish
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Arabic
- Portuguese
- Russian
More languages will certainly come in time, helping Translate better connect the world’s multicultural population.
Better Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text
With the improvements to Siri and the new Translate app, we’ll all be able to get much more use out of our iPhone devices. You’ll be able to fire off messages much faster, and easily talk and text with people who speak different languages from you.
Siri has gotten some much-needed improvement in iOS 14. The personal assistant will be able to help us even more than before, whether we’re at home, at work, or on vacation.