- The live translation will arrive at Airpods 4, Airpods Pro 2 and Airpods Pro 3
- Not available in Apple accounts based on the EU
- Apple says it is due to EU regulations
One of the most impressive characteristics of Airpods Pro 3 is the live translation, which offers real -time translation between several different languages, especially Europeans in launch. But the characteristic will not actually be available for people living in many of those countries.
That is also a blow to the AirPods 4 with the owners of ANC and Airpods Pro 2 who expected the live translation to reach their ears with the launch of iOS 26. And it is the APLE iOS 26 page that contains the bad news.
If it is located in an EU country, so the United Kingdom is not affected, the characteristic has been delayed. It still comes, says Apple. But he won’t say when.
Why can’t Europeans use the live translation for the languages of their own countries?
This is what Apple has published:
“Apple intelligence: live translation with airpods
The live translation with AirPods is not available if it is in the EU and its country or Apple region is also in the EU “
The first languages available are:
- English (United Kingdom)
- English (United States)
- French (France) – is not available in the EU
- German (Germany) – is not available in the EU
- Portuguese (Brazil)
- Spanish (Spain) – It is not available in the EU
In statements to Techcrunch, Apple blamed the EU digital markets law and its interoperability requirements; Apparently, the speculation that the delay was due to the EU data protection regulations was incorrect.
The DMA is the same law that Apple said it was responsible for delaying some Apple intelligence characteristics for European users last year.
Apple and other technological giants are not great fans of the DMA. According to this legislation, both Apple and goal were beaten with fines earlier this year, in the case of Apple, not allowing application developers to point to alternative offers outside the Apple application store itself. The finish line was for violating the DMA combining its personal data of multiple services.
If you are of the cynical type, I might think that it is of Apple interest to make the DMA look bad for EU voters, but what you think about the context, the big question is: when will you get the live translation?
The brief answer is that we do not know, but it is likely to spend months instead of weeks: Apple’s intelligence characteristics in Apple’s EU arrived in March 2025, five months after customers who are not from the EU obtained the entire collection in iOS 18.1.
