Htranslate app review: nowhere near the best translation app around

Introduction

I have been writing quite a few reviews about translating apps recently, and since I speak five different languages, I can easily check the quality of translations. Some of the apps I have tested did really well, mainly the ones that don’t focus on many different languages, but Htranslate by Factoria Virtual de Proyectos doesn’t come close to any of the other free translation apps I have reviewed. The reasons for this will be explained later in this review, but I’ll give one of them away here. The app doesn’t even translate basic sentences correctly.

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Design, Speed, and So Many Languages

Let me start with a positive note. The app does have a really easy-to-use design, with the screen divided in half with a language on each side. Selecting a new language is really easy and you can easily flip the source and goal language with the tap on a button.

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Where the app fails instantly is the speed. The app takes at least a few seconds for every button you tap, and selecting a language (or even flipping your languages) can take even longer. The app supports many different languages, and this is where I think it goes wrong. With so many supported languages, the developer must be using an outsourced service to provide the translations, which shows, as some of the translations that came back were absolutely wrong.

Other Options and Good Languages

One of the options I was really glad to see was the translation history. At any moment you can go back to what you’ve translated already and recall it. This can be really helpful when you’re traveling or you go back to certain countries quite often. I would like to see an option here where you can make some sentences favorites, so they’re even easier to access at any time. You can tell the developer is from a Spanish-speaking country as some of the explanations and the App Store page are written in broken English. This obviously means that the Spanish translations are top-notch, mainly from Spanish to English and Portuguese. 

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Pros and Cons

Pros

• Tons of different languages
• Easy-to-use design
• Translation history

Cons

• Some bad translations
• Really slow to navigate
• No translation favorites

Conclusion

Htranslator is nowhere close to being the best translation app. It simply doesn’t translate well, is really slow and misses some options that would be really handy, and that other apps do have. The developer of this app would be better off just focusing on only one or two languages, as the amount of languages currently available in this app is just way too high. On the plus side, the app is free, there is no limit to translations, and the history is handy. The app is made compatible with both iPhone and iPad and takes up just over 2 MB. It’s not clear if it’s usable offline, as it’s mentioned nowhere.