Another day, another Siri hack. Lingual is a new jailbreak-only tweak for the iPhone 4S that extends Siri's functionality to voice translation. Created by the CodeThemed team, Lingual allows translation from English to over 30 languages. The developers have said that they're hoping to include translation to English in a future update. We installed the tweak and can report that it works flawlessly, quickly pulling in results using Microsoft's Bing Translate API as a backend. Its only limitation is that backend, which isn't as strong as Google's offering, and regularly fails to correctly translate phrases. That said, the developers of Lingual can't be held accountable for Bing's shortcomings, and they've done commendable work in such a short space of time. For basic translation, this could prove a useful tool at your disposal.

The tweak is one of the first third-party extensions to take advantage of the AssistantExtensions platform for Siri development. AssistantExtensions, as well as adding extra functionality to Siri, allows anyone with even basic programming knowledge to extend Siri's capabilities. If you're interested in developing for the platform, its website provides an easy-to-follow tutorial to get you started. The developer has already shown off in-line tweeting, YouTube search, and "Chat box," an advanced chat AI that extends Siri's ability to converse and provide information. It's early days yet, but we're looking forward to seeing what comes from this promising new platform. Both of the free tweaks can be found by searching for "Lingual" in the Cydia store.

Thanks, Austin!





