As AI models become more and more powerful, many people will switch to AI for translation instead of traditional translation tools such as Google Translate. Like me, I mostly use ChatGPT now. In Android, a very useful RTranslator translation app has recently appeared, using the OpenAI Whisper + Meta’s NLLB model. The model needs to be downloaded to the phone before use, which means it can be used offline. It also has a very practical chat mode built-in, allowing you to chat and translate directly with foreigners in real time.
Currently, RTranslator only has an Android version, not an iOS version, and it is not available on the Play Store. You need to download the APK file from the GitHub project and install it manually. If you mind, we recommend skipping it.
RTranslator is a free offline translation app using the Whisper + Meta NLLB model, and also has a built-in chat mode.
- obtain RTranslator App
RTranslator is a completely free LLM model translation app. The latest version is 2.0.3.
The speech part is recognized and converted into text through OpenAI Whisper. The model number is Whisper-Small-244M. The translation part uses Meta NLLB. This is also an open source model, but commercial use is not allowed. This should be noted. Model number is NLLB-Distilled-600M.
There are 30 supported languages, including: Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Croatian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese.
Click the link above to enter the RTranslator project and download the latest version. The file extension is .apk:
Then there will be some instructions, such as what OpenAI and Meta models do. In addition, this App has hardware requirements and must have at least 6GB of memory, otherwise it may experience slow speed or crash. The name part is used when you want to chat with another mobile phone to let the other party know the name of your mobile phone:
You need to download the model before use, and just wait for it to finish running. After downloading, you can use it even if there is no Internet connection. The operating interface is the same as that of most translation software, so it shouldn’t be difficult to get started:
In order to test whether it can really be used offline, I switched the phone to airplane mode and turned off WIFI:
The test turned out to be no problem. It can really be translated and the speed is very fast. Although the translation quality of Meta NLLB is not as good as ChatGPT, it is still acceptable. WalkieTalkie Mode in the lower left corner is a wireless walkie-talkie mode, which can be used for two-way translation directly on this mobile phone, such as: what you hear in English is translated into Chinese, and what you hear in Chinese is translated into English. Conversation Mode is a chat mode that can be connected to other mobile phones via Bluetooth for instant chat translation:
Those who want to use chat mode, remember to allow relevant permissions, such as finding, connecting and determining nearby devices:
WalkieTalkie Mode I tested the detection ability of the wireless walkie-talkie mode pretty well. When I speak Chinese, it will be translated into English, and when I change to speak English, it will be translated into Chinese on the other side:
Source: KOCPC Chinese