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Delete the Translation App, Use an AI Assistant Instead

A translator gives you one meaning and forgets it. Ask an AI and you get the meaning, the context, the usage, and a vocabulary list at the end of the day.

April 20, 20263 min read

There is an app on your phone you should stop using: the translation app.

Why

Translation apps were genuinely useful when what you needed was English into Vietnamese or the reverse. But that was before AI assistants existed.

Now that ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are available, use those instead.

Where the difference lies

With a very simple prompt, you give it a word, say argument. It does not only hand back a meaning. It tells you the context and the usage. You come away understanding the word a little better than you did.

Context especially. If you are looking up a word from something you are reading, it knows what subject you are working in, so it gives you the sense that fits that subject. You get further into the text.

The second point, and the best one

An AI assistant keeps the conversation.

At the end of a lesson, or at the end of the day, you can say: summarise the vocabulary I asked you about today.

And there is your vocabulary list. Every word on it is one you genuinely met and genuinely needed.

With a translation app, you look something up and it is gone.