Future Apps rolls out speech-based translators

When you’re trying to pick up the nuances of a different language, it’s one thing to see how a phrase translates from English to another tongue, but it’s quite another to hear how to pronounce something properly. That’s the idea behind Future Apps’ newly released line of iSpeak translation-language learning tools for the iPhone and iPod touch.

The apps, built in conjunction with speech specialists Acapela Group, feature a text translator to convert English phrases into other languages. But there’s also a text-to-speech feature, which pronounces the translated phrase in the targeted language.

The iSpeak apps come in eight languages: Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. Each app costs $2. Future Apps says it plans to offer other languages soon.

Because of the text-to-speech feature, each iSpeak app is a pretty large download for an iPhone offering. Apps range in size from 80.5MB for iSpeak French to 182MB for iSpeak Swedish.