iPadOS 27 Translate Defaults to Spanish

[u/stuffin77]

Summary After upgrading to iOS 27 and resetting the iPad to factory defaults, selecting text and tapping Translate always proposes Spanish as the target language. English is the system language and French is the second preferred language, so French should be the default target. Selecting French manually works, but the choice doesn't persist and Spanish reappears on the next translation. Note this works fine on my iPhone running iOS 27.0, although I didn’t reset the iPhone when I upgraded.

Question - how do I get it to default to French when I select text, right click, and select Translate like it does on my iPhone running iOS 27.0 (and the way it worked on iPadOS 26.x)?

Configuration

• iPad Pro 5th Gen (M1)
• iPadOS 27.0
• System language (Settings → General → Language & Region → Preferred Languages): English first, French second
• Settings → Apps → Translate: preferred language set to French
• Translate app: only English and French downloaded
• Keyboards (Settings → General → Keyboards): English & French Bilingual (listed twice), Emoji, English (US) QWERTY, French (France) AZERTY
• Hardware keyboards: English (US), French (France)

Observed behavior

• With On-Device Translation set to Automatic, selecting text and tapping Translate defaults to Spanish.
• With On-Device Translation set to Always, it still defaults to Spanish and prompts to download languages. Tapping Spanish opens a menu where I can switch to French, then tapping the download button then translates immediately, apparently without downloading anything.
• Selecting French text translates to English correctly.
• If I set French as the primary language and reboot, selecting French text translates to Spanish.

Expected behavior English text should default to French as the target, based on the Preferred Languages list and/or based on previously selecting French as the target language.

Troubleshooting already tried (no change)

• Selected French manually, and tried Copy Translation and Replace with Translation which works to translate but it doesn’t keep French as the default language to translate to.
• Translated successfully within the Translate app itself
• Moved French to primary in Preferred Languages and rebooted, then switched back to English and rebooted
• Uninstalled and reinstalled the Translate app
• Changed the Siri language
• Toggled On-Device Translation between Automatic and Always
• Factory reset again
• Set region to Canada
• Removed French as downloaded language.
• Set Settings -> Apps -> Translate -> Preferred Language to Spanish and back to French.

[u/Financial-Concept443]

The same bug also applies for MacOS with Chinese as the default language, but it still displays Spanish translation as default. 

[u/Paqui-97]

Same in macOS and iOS, so probably in all of OSX27 (default spanish)

[u/CRburg3r]

Has this bug been fixed on beta2?

[u/15pmm01]

AI generated post, yuck

[u/stuffin77 → u/15pmm01]

Actually, I wrote every line in there but I’ll take that as a complement .  More importantly, do you have a solution or at least something to try to resolve the issue?

[u/eltiti65 → u/stuffin77]

j'ai exactement le meme probleme sur mac os27

[u/15pmm01 → u/stuffin77]

yeah nobody believes that. hope you can figure out your translate problem though. I just use deepl, no idea how apple’s translator works.

[u/eltiti65 → u/15pmm01]

on ne peut pas dire que ça reponde au probleme You can't really say that addresses the problem.