Yesterday the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals a future feature allowing users to edit dictation by voice or virtual keyboard. Users will be able to dictate a message in English and when finished tell Siri to translate the message to Spanish, Chinese, French and any other language that Siri supports. The good news is that much of this patent will actually be fulfilled next Tuesday when iOS 11 debuts. Siri will be able to translate words and phrases and Apple's patent makes it sound like the service will expand over time to accomplish more and longer messages. To get a taste of what's to come – Gadget Hacks covered parts of this feature on iOS 11 here.

Apple's patent FIGS. 8B/C/D noted above and 8H/i/J/K below provide illustrations of dictation-based text editing while FIG. 9 illustrates a method for implementing dictation-based text editing. (Click on any of the images below to enlarge)

Apple notes that in some embodiments, such as FIG. 8M, the user may select one of the alternative replacement text strings by touching or tapping the alternative replacement text string on the display.

In the example depicted in FIG. 8KK below we're able to see the user specifying the target language as part of the predefined editing command. In other examples, the user does not specify the target language in the predefined editing command; the target language may instead be specified as a configuration parameter on the iPhone (or other iDevice).

Further, Apple notes that in some embodiments, the iPhone (iDevice) enables a user to modify the textual data by inserting emoji (e.g., digital images or icons that are used to express an idea or emotion) into the textual data. In some embodiments, a user can insert emoji by providing a natural-language input that includes an emoji command and one or more emoji tags. Emoji tags may be descriptors that help the iPhone identify which emoji the user wants to insert.

Apple notes that in other cases, there may be multiple emoji in the set of emoji that match the specified emoji tags. In the example depicted in FIGS. 8SS-UU, the user says "face heart emoji." In response to determining that this natural-language input #839 includes the predefined editing command "face heart emoji", the device selects three candidate emoji #840, #842 and #844 from the set of emoji based on the emoji tags of "face" and "heart," and presents the candidate emoji to the user by displaying them on the display, as shown in FIG. 8UU.  

Apple's patent FIG. 11 illustrates an overview of iOS with functional blocks related to Siri and editing dictation

Apple's patent application was filed back in September 2016.

Patently Apple presents a detailed summary of patent applications with associated graphics for journalistic news purposes as each such patent application is revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trade Office. Readers are cautioned that the full text of any patent application should be read in its entirety for full and accurate details. About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or negative behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus.