Translation and transcription, beyond text and voice notes.
A message you cannot read is often not plain text — a delivery notice with a reply button under it, a poll, a reel somebody forwarded, a voice note, a video. Two taps translate any of them, and anything with speech in it is transcribed first.
Translation — the bubble reads in your language
Tap the translate glyph, then Replace with Translation. The translation stands where the original text stood, with Show Original under it.
What it works on
The glyph follows the text, not the message type — and the messages that arrive in another language are rarely plain text.
Including the reply buttons
A business message’s buttons are separate strings from its body, so each one carries its own glyph and is translated in place.
Transcription — not only voice messages
Anything with an audio track can be transcribed, and the transcript writes itself in under the media as the speech is recognised.
What you can transcribe
On a voice message or an audio file the control is an icon in the bubble; on everything else it is a Transcribe link under the media.
Then read it in your own language
A transcript is text, so it carries a translate glyph of its own. Most messaging apps stop at the transcript and leave you with one you still cannot read.
Translation and transcription — questions, answered.
Because the app reads them as already being in your language. Every message is classified on its own text, against your device language, and the glyph is drawn only where the answer is no — so a chat in your own language keeps its exact layout.
A message in another script is foreign even when it is one word long, because the script is the evidence. In the same script as your own language it has to be at least four characters and confidently classified, which is what keeps a button off "ok" and "lol".
No. Every translation you accept is saved on your device with the message, so reopening the chat a week later shows the translated text straight away.
Show Original is the opposite of that: it brings the message back as it was sent and deletes the translation, on the device as well as from the screen. That is deliberate — otherwise the bubble would quietly re-translate itself the next time you scrolled past.
Whichever ones your iPhone has. The sheet that opens is Apple’s own and it runs on the device, so the languages are the same list the Translate app uses — managed in Settings › Apps › Translate › Downloaded Languages, where you can also keep them for offline use. If you have not downloaded a language yet, the sheet deals with that itself.
There is nothing to download inside AI Reply Assistant, no account to make and no key to paste. Because the list is Apple’s, a language added in an iOS release works here the day it ships.
Because they are separate strings from the body. Translating the body of a template, list or interactive message leaves its buttons in the original language, so each button carries its own glyph at its trailing edge and tapping it changes that label in place.
It is one sheet per label rather than one for the card: Apple’s sheet returns exactly one translation for the one string it is given.
No. Nothing in your chats is translated or transcribed in the background, and no message is sent anywhere to be checked — deciding that a message is in another language is a local test on its text, and all it ever does is put a glyph on screen. The work starts when you tap.
It is saved on your device under the message, so the next time you open that chat it is already there rather than being recognised again.
Copy transcript in the message’s long-press menu puts the spoken text on the clipboard, and what was said joins the on-device search index — so a voice message you have transcribed can be found from the Home Screen along with the rest of your conversations.
You are not asked before it runs. The first guess is the language this sender writes in, rather than the language of the chat — in a mixed group the dominant language of the room is frequently nobody’s. If the audio turns out not to fit that guess, it is decoded again against the other languages the conversation is actually spoken in, and the best fit wins. Fit is measured on the audio rather than on the words that came out, because a speech model handed the wrong language produces fluent, confident-looking sentences rather than obvious gibberish.
To set it yourself, tap Wrong language? on a finished transcript, or Transcript language in the long-press menu. Both open the same picker, which asks how far the choice reaches: This message transcribes that one message again, and This chat sets the default for the conversation and re-runs the transcripts on screen, leaving alone any message you have already given a language of its own.
For most languages, yes. The picker splits them in two: On Device languages have a speech model that runs on your iPhone, and the model is fetched for you the first time one is used. Available to download languages have no on-device model and are recognised by Apple’s server-side speech instead, which needs a connection.
That is the one part of this chapter that does not run on the device, and the picker says so where you choose.
No. A transcript is a saved piece of text that outlives the media it came from, and view-once media was released exactly once. There is no Transcribe control on it, and no transcript can be produced for it by any other route.
Yes, separately, in Settings › Chat › Message Content Actions.
Turning off Translate Button removes the glyph from every bubble, caption, transcript and button label, and takes Translate out of the long-press menu. Turning off Transcribe Button removes the transcribe control and the transcript section from every kind of media, and the transcript-language picker with them.
Your personal AI assistant for messaging.
Download AI Reply Assistant on iOS and try it free.