r/machinetranslation

Hey Reddit,

I just launched Pocket Interpreter, an AI-powered offline interpreter designed to help people have real conversations across language barriers.

Unlike traditional translation apps where you manually translate sentences back and forth, Pocket Interpreter is built around live multilingual conversations.

What makes it different?

Imagine:

You speak Spanish,

The other person speaks English.

Both of you see and hear translations in your own language.

No internet required.

Pocket Interpreter acts like a personal interpreter in your pocket.

Features

✅ Real-time conversation interpretation

✅ Offline voice-to-voice communication

✅ Direct phone-to-phone conversation mode (BLE)

✅ Offline text translation

✅ OCR translation for signs, menus, and documents

✅ On-device AI processing

✅ Privacy-first (no cloud processing)

✅ Works in Airplane Mode

Built for

International travelers

Tourists

Business meetings

Taxi and delivery drivers

Hotels and hospitality staff

International students

Anyone communicating across languages

Launch Offer 🎉

To celebrate the launch:

Lifetime Access → $0.99

App link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.cyberfly.privatescan

One-time purchase. No subscription.

I'd love feedback from travelers, language learners, and anyone who has faced language barriers while traveling.

A – Answer: What problem does your app solve? 

Many great games, web videos, and live streams lack subtitles in your native language. Subtify solves this by acting as your ultimate real-time companion. It provides a universal, live translation layer directly on your iPhone or iPad, allowing you to understand any content, anywhere.

Subtify achieves this using a switchable, dual-engine architecture. Depending on the media you are consuming, you can instantly toggle between:

• High-Speed OCR: Instantly reads and translates hardcoded, on-screen text and subtitles.
• Advanced Speech-to-Text (STT): Listens to live dialogue and transcribes it into real-time translated captions.

Powered entirely by the Apple Neural Engine, all translations happen 100% on-device. This guarantees total privacy, near-zero latency, and full offline functionality (once your preferred language packs are downloaded)—your data never leaves your device.

Core Environments:

• Web Browser Mode: A built-in, desktop-class browser designed to bypass mobile restrictions. Effortlessly switch between translating live speech or on-screen text from any web video platform, including YouTube, Netflix, and more.
• PS5 Console Mode: Transform your iPhone or iPad into a smart wireless side-screen. Acting as a headless Remote Play client, it captures game dialogue via high-speed OCR and displays translated text in real-time while you play on your main TV.
• Local Video Hub: A robust media player that generates live, translated subtitles for any movie or video file imported directly from your device's library.
• External PC & Mac Mode: Connect seamlessly via Wi-Fi to scan your computer's screen or listen to its audio output, providing wireless translation for any desktop application, video, or game.

B – Better: Why is your app better than the top named alternatives? 

The iOS ecosystem currently lacks a true "universal" media translator. Most existing tools are heavily restricted—working only on specific websites, requiring specific file formats, or relying on slow, cloud-based processing.

Subtify stands alone as a comprehensive, all-in-one suite. Its unique advantage is the flexibility of its dual-engine (OCR or STT) across four dedicated environments (Web, Local, PS5, PC). Whether you need to "read" hardcoded text in a console game or switch to "listening" to a live web broadcast, Subtify puts you in control. By combining a desktop-class browser, a local media player, and specialized side-screen companion modes into a single, offline-capable app, Subtify offers a versatile, privacy-first solution that simply doesn't exist anywhere else on the App Store.

C – Cost: Pricing, IAP details, and a direct App Store link 

Subtify follows a transparent, pay-for-what-you-use access model. Every user starts with a complimentary 1-Hour Translation Bank. Your balance only counts down when the translation engine is actively processing audio or images.

• Free: 1-Hour Translation Bank included to test all features fully.
• Weekly Subscription: $1.99
• Monthly Subscription: $4.99
• Lifetime Unlock: $9.99

Links:

• App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/subtify/id6760586123
• Full Feature Demo: https://youtu.be/_RuharwR3L0?si=guKW89hihz7OjLJ_
• PS5 Mode Demo: https://youtube.com/shorts/RM0CyPpIFcw?si=gt4ua9YJUhRI7z-w
• PS5 Setup Guide: https://youtu.be/2ELlY6ObaJo?si=FRRWsldAmfBgNgXI
• Local Video Mode: https://youtube.com/shorts/g-nr-9Obklw?si=slduOuGsN4F88RWM
• Web Video (Youtube): https://youtube.com/shorts/ZOlWaMNNCM0

UPD: It's out! https://github.com/b2kdaman/pc98/releases/tag/v1.0.6

Macduff Hughes spent 12 years leading Google Translate. He was a co-author on the landmark 2016 GNMT paper alongside Jeff Dean, oversaw error reductions of up to 85% on some language pairs overnight, and then guided the team through the LLM era before retiring in 2024.

I had him on my podcast and we went deep on things he hasn't talked about publicly much:

- How statistical MT actually worked under the hood and why he knew in 2012 it had a ceiling

- What the internal decision to go all-in on neural actually looked like — who the skeptics were, what changed the room

- The human side: engineers who had spent years on the statistical system and had to decide whether to adapt

- Gender bias baked into training data and what the team built to address it

- Why 80-90% of the web is in just 10 languages and what that means for everyone else

- His honest take on what LLMs mean for dedicated translation products and the professionals who work in the industry

He's retired now, no agenda, and was remarkably candid.

Full episode: https://youtu.be/dwYgYj_Cmvg

Happy to answer questions, I host a podcast on language technology and have been in the localization industry for 30 years.

We recently updated the localization workflow in Closed Caption Creator to allow for multitrack review. If you’re interested in MT and need to review subtitle translations you should check out our new overview: https://youtu.be/ljYX4pTbhfA

Happy to answer any questions -