English → French Translation
English to French translation at your fingertips - powered by the AI model of your choice, right inside every Mac app.
How It Works
Select your text
Highlight the text you want to translate in any application - email, a document, a browser tab, or a chat window.
Press the shortcut
Hit your configured Echoo keyboard shortcut. Nothing is copied to the clipboard and no window opens.
AI translates
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite reads the whole selection before translating so it can settle the tu/vous question once and apply it consistently, rather than switching halfway through a paragraph.
Result appears inline
The French is pasted back in place with the non-breaking spaces French typography requires before : ; ! and ? already inserted.
Example Translation
English (Original)
We are pleased to inform you that your application has been approved. Please find the onboarding documents attached.
French (Translated)
Nous avons le plaisir de vous informer que votre candidature a été approuvée. Veuillez trouver ci-joint les documents d'intégration.
Translating English to French
French punctuation is stricter than English and most tools get it wrong: a non-breaking space belongs before the colon, semicolon, exclamation mark and question mark, and quotations take guillemets rather than curly quotes. Beyond typography, the tu/vous decision propagates through every verb in the passage, so a translator that decides sentence by sentence produces text that visibly wobbles. French also resists the noun stacking English loves - "customer data retention policy" has to be unpacked into a phrase with de and des, which lengthens the result by around 20%. Business French keeps formulas English dropped decades ago; closing an email the way you would in English reads as abrupt. Echoo preserves your register and applies the typographic rules automatically.
Recommended Setup
Best model for this pair
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite handles English to French best in our testing. Any provider you have configured will work - this is the one to pick if you have a choice.
Voice dictation
Dictation is supported for English, so you can speak instead of typing and have the result translated in the same step.
Tips for Better Translations
French uses formal "vous" and informal "tu" - configure your Echoo command to specify the desired register for consistent output.
Accented characters (é, è, ê, ë, ç) are handled natively - no special keyboard setup needed.
For Canadian French, add "Quebec French" to your translation command to get regionally appropriate vocabulary.
French sentences are typically 15-20% longer than English equivalents - plan accordingly for layout-sensitive content.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. You can configure your translation command to target Canadian French (québécois), which uses different vocabulary and expressions compared to Metropolitan French.
AI models are trained on extensive French corpora and correctly assign grammatical gender. You can add context clues in your command to handle ambiguous cases.
Absolutely. Select the text in Apple Mail, press your Echoo shortcut, and the translation replaces or appends to the selected text.
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Ready to Try It?
Download Echoo and start translating text with AI shortcuts.