Felo Translator

Felo Translator, sold on the Japanese App Store as Felo 瞬訳, is a real-time AI translation app for iPhone and iPad made by Felo Inc. It transcribes speech to text as it is spoken and translates it immediately, covering more than 15 languages including Japanese, Chinese, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian, Korean, Thai, Czech, Indonesian, Cantonese and Vietnamese, with Hindi added in a recent update.

Felo Translator detects the speaker's language automatically and saves both the conversation and its translation, so a record of each exchange is kept without manual steps. Translation uses what Felo Inc. calls RRT technology: Realtime transcription, ReWrite, which reconstructs the sentence from its context, and Translate. The rewriting step reads the context of the input before translating, aiming at natural, expressive output rather than word-by-word conversion, in the manner of a personal interpreter.

Typical settings are foreign-language classes, living abroad, conversations with speakers of other languages, in-person meetings and following foreign news. Felo Translator carries no advertising. Creating an account is free and includes 60 minutes of use; inviting a friend who joins adds another 60 free minutes. The free plan gives access to every feature of the app, and a paid plan is needed only once the free time is used up.

Paid options are sold as in-app purchases in yen. Pro access is available by the day: ¥110 for a first one-day purchase, then ¥610 for one day, ¥1,590 for three days, ¥3,190 for seven days and ¥6,190 for 30 days or one month, with a 12-month plan at ¥38,000. Minute packs cost ¥610 for 120 minutes and ¥20,000 for 900 minutes. The app requires iOS 15.0 or later, and its interface is in Japanese and 14 other languages.

Use cases

• Following a class taught in a foreign language
• Everyday conversations while living abroad
• In-person meetings between speakers of different languages
• Keeping up with foreign-language news