Basic, Advanced and AI: which translation style to pick

Mate for Mac and iPhone lets you choose between three translation styles.

The three styles

Basic: quick, solid translations for the everyday. Free for everyone.

Advanced: reads like a person wrote it. Best for longer text, with a formal or informal tone. Included in Mate Pro.

AI: translations by a large language model, plus extras under the translation: a note on how the phrase is used, synonyms, definitions and example sentences. It also spots typos in your input and shows "Did you mean". Included in Mate Pro.

How to switch

• Mac: click the engine pill in the bar at the bottom of the translate window. A card titled Pick your translation style opens. You can also set a Default engine in Settings › Translation.
• iPhone and iPad: tap the "Translated with …" pill under the translation and pick a style.

Locked styles show Included in Mate Pro.

Which one to use

• Chat messages, menus, quick look-ups: Basic. It's the fastest.
• Emails, essays, anything you'll send to another person: Advanced.
• Idioms, slang, single words you want to understand properly, or when you're learning the language: AI.

Things to know

• Advanced and AI have fair-use limits. When you reach one, Mate quietly switches to Basic for the rest of the day and tells you so. See Why did Mate switch to the standard engine?.
• Offline translation always uses the on-device engine, so the style pill is hidden while you're offline.
• The browser extension uses the Basic style.