As the world becomes a smaller place, you’re probably picking up some contacts in far off players. Maybe you have a business and you need to communicate with clients in China, or yet still, you’re traveling around Spain and need to pick up some local phrases. Whatever the case might be, it’s becoming increasingly important to be able to speak to people from all over the planet — yet it remains frustrating that we can’t learn ‘em all. That’s exactly where Siri comes in.

Now that the new iOS 11 is out, there are many updates on it that’ll drastically change the way you communicate. Instead of focusing on the better known features, let’s do a deep dive into the the brand spanking new ‘automatic translator’ feature of Cupertino’s latest mobile operating system. Apple has been working hard and spending the hours in finding a way to make communication between different languages easier. Google Translate isn’t bad, but, you know, it doesn’t translate everything correctly, making it somewhat unreliable. Furthermore, it’s entirely web based meaning that you have to go out of your way if you actually want to translate something. But now, through Siri, iOS is able to directly translate words and phrases into different languages. Essentially, Siri is turning into a version of Google Translate on the go (Sorry Mountain View!)

Prior to iOS 11, if you wanted to use Siri to translate a word or phrase, she had to use external links which you would then have to scroll through and read. However, now with the iOS 11, whether you’re on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, you’ll be able to directly translate words and phrase without having to open external links. Siri will directly tell you the translation and provide you with proper pronunciation of that word or phrase.

What’s even better is how easy it is to use Siri’s automatic translation feature. We’ll show you how it’s done. Firstly, you want to make sure that Siri’s default language is set to English. This is, for now, the only language which can be translated from with Siri. Of course, more languages will be added on, but don’t hold your breath for additional language support in iOS 11. That’ll be an iOS 12 feature, undoubtedly.

Once that’s done, you can either say “Hey Siri” or go to the Siri screen by long-pressing the home button. The screen should then pop up where you’ll be able to ask her your question. You can ask her, “How do you say Where is the bathroom? In Spanish?” or in any other language that you’d like to translate your question to. You can also type your question as well, now that Siri comes with a Type to Siri feature. We all know that we cannot always ask Siri a question out loud, so this update on Siri is a great improvement. Then, Siri will translate your word or phrase to you and send you an audio and text of the translation. That way, you hear and see what you need to say.

You may be wondering how well does Siri translate words and phrases? Well, actually Siri does a pretty good job of translate various phrases and words meaning that, if you’re a tourist, having Siri will come in handy.

Does It Have Any Downfalls?

Of course, with every piece of technology, there are its downfalls. This is the first major update for Siri when it comes to translations, so, it will have its faults, however, through future updates, Siri will continue to improve and impress users.

An additional pitfall of using Siri as a translator is the limited amount of languages it can translate to. At this moment in time, Siri can offer users translations in German, French, Mandarin Chinese, Italian and Spanish. Though the range of languages isn’t vast, it does cover some of the most popular languages spoken internationally.

If you’re wondering when the updates to Siri’s translation feature will be implemented, nobody knows outside of Apple itself. We can only cross our fingers and hope it’ll be sooner rather than later.

Is your language not included on the list? Is there a language that you’d like to see featured in Siri’s automatic translations? Let us know in the comment section below!