{"id":43958,"date":"2024-07-04T16:07:17","date_gmt":"2024-07-04T20:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=43958"},"modified":"2024-10-07T13:22:58","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T17:22:58","slug":"translation-api-in-ios-17-and-macos-sequoia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/04\/translation-api-in-ios-17-and-macos-sequoia\/","title":{"rendered":"Translation API in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Rossignol<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

In a WWDC 2024 coding video last week, Apple highlighted a recently-introduced API that allows developers to offer built-in Translate app capabilities in their own apps on iOS 17.4, iPadOS 17.4, macOS Sonoma, and later.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Apple<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Discover how you can translate text across different languages in your app using the new Translation framework. We’ll show you how to quickly display translations in the system UI, and how to translate larger batches of text for your app’s UI.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Sequoia still doesn’t bring the Translate app to the Mac, so I’m hoping someone will use this to make a standalone app so that I don’t need to read translations within a tiny popover.<\/p>\n\n

Kyle Howells<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The new Translation API is such a massive disappointment.<\/p>

It’s a purely SwiftUI API.<\/p>

Even the programatic API to get back Strings from Strings (no UI) requires you to get a session object via SwiftUI to do so.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Really hope this isn’t a pattern Apple is going to use going forward in the future.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

TranslationSession<\/a>:<\/p>\n

You don’t instantiate this class directly. Instead, you obtain an instance of it by adding a translationTask(_:action:)<\/code><\/a> or translationTask(source:target:action:)<\/code><\/a> function to the SwiftUI view containing the content you want to translate, such as a Text<\/code> view. When you do, the function passes you an instance of a translation session in its action<\/code> closure which triggers as soon as the view appears. After you receive this instance, use one of the translate functions to translate one or more strings of text.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Kyle Howells<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I wonder if these sort of horrible API designs are a consequence of Apple building features with SwiftUI natively now?<\/p>

UIKit allows UI to be presented fairly freely from around your code, due to the view controller hierarchy being easily accessed.<\/p>

SwiftUI needs an element anchored to a View to do anything.<\/p>

If that’s true, eventually virtually all APIs will need to be invoked via a method on View and I’m going to really hate the next few years of Apple API releases.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n