Using ChatGPT to translate an iOS app

ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, AI - The tools that will take our jobs, or so everyone says. This past weekend I put ChatGPT to the test with my first real use case.

I’ve been thinking about translating my app Box Timer to a few different languages in order to support more users. This is a pretty simple task with SwiftUI and Apple Xcode’s latest localization features.

However I only speak Swedish and English, in order to translate the app to German, Spanish or any other language I need some help. Usually I would turn to Google Translate, but I would have to translate each text over and over for each language I want to support.

ChatGPT to the rescue! The use case was clear, translate a text from English to multiple languages all at once.

The prompt goes something like

Translate “Edit Timer” to Spanish, German, French, Swedish and Polish

And the output I get is translated and ready to be put into the lanuage files.

Spanish: “Editar temporizador”
German: “Timer bearbeiten”
French: “Modifier le minuteur”
Swedish: “Redigera timer”
Polish: “Edytuj timer”

ChatGPT and Google Translate don’t always agree and I can’t rely on either of them if I want perfect translations. But for this applicaton it’s more than good enough.

If you haven’t tried ChatGPT yet I really suggest that you do! It’s a fun tool to play around with.