Working On English for iPhone Siddur

One question we get fairly often about our iPhone Siddur is if we will be adding English. Up until recently, I have always told people we have no plans on adding English. The issue was, for us at least, finding a quality English translation. We have partnered with someone to bring English to the Siddur. We are starting with Nusach Ashkenaz and adding the other Nusachs in the future.

So I am extremely excited to let you know that we are actively working on adding English to the Siddur. Here is an early screen shot of how it might look. Of course, we would love your feedback:

We are planning on giving users the ability to add English as an in-app upgrade (for a fee). When they buy it, they can either show English only, Hebrew only, or both English and Hebrew. If you select both, the Hebrew will be at the top and you will be able to adjust the size of the English window using the tab on the left hand corner. You can make the English window very tall or very short - up to you.

As you scroll through the Hebrew, the English will scroll in sync with the content. Obviously, English to Hebrew translation is not one-to-one (i.e. one Hebrew word can be one or more English words). Plus, you will see that this translation is pretty wordy, it is not raw translation, it is much more than that. I'll share more about the author of the translation as we get ready to launch this feature.

In summary, we are actively working on adding English translation. We have no estimated time for when it will be available, but I am hoping sooner than later. We have secured the content for Ashkenaz, and we are working on the other Nusachs now. We have programmed the interfaces for the dual screen scrolling reading mode. We are in the process of tagging the English content to the Hebrew content, so the scroll is both logical and useful.

This is a ton of work - but we think many of you will appreciate the upgrade. I do not have pricing information yet also.

So subscribe to our blog or follow @iSiddur on Twitter to know when this is available.

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