No Keyboard for That Language? Just Say It.
You don't need to learn an input method or hunt for accented characters to write a sentence in a language you don't have a keyboard for. macOS Dictation transcribes speech straight into FusionMD or PolyWrite, in the right script, automatically. And for the lines that really need to land right, speaking them yourself skips the layer where machine translation tends to introduce mistakes.
The keyboard isn't the only way in
Plenty of people can speak a second or third language passably — or know someone, a colleague, a friend, a family member, who can — without wanting to memorize a Japanese IME or an Arabic keyboard layout for the sake of a single email. Typing was never really the requirement; getting the right words into the document was. macOS Dictation removes the input problem entirely: speak, and the words appear already in the correct script — right-to-left, accented, tone marks and all — without adding a new keyboard layout you'll never use again.
Turn on Dictation for the language you need
In System Settings → Keyboard → Dictation, turn Dictation on and set the language you'll be speaking in. If you need to switch languages between messages, that's where you switch it.
In FusionMD or PolyWrite: click into the document where you want the text, then press Fn Fn (or choose Edit → Start Dictation) and speak. The words land in the document exactly like typed text — same font, same paragraph — ready for spell-check, formatting, and export like anything else you wrote.
Why speaking beats translating, for the parts that matter
Our Writing for International Trade guide covers writing in English or French and using on-device translation to convert it to your partner's language — fast, and good enough for routine correspondence. But a translation is still a second-hand version of what you meant, generated by a model guessing at your intent. Idiom, tone, and register are exactly the things machine translation still gets subtly wrong — and if you don't read the target language well, you have no way to catch it before you send it.
Dictation skips that layer. If you — or a bilingual colleague, or a native-speaking contact on the phone — can just say the sentence in the target language, what lands in the document is the actual sentence someone meant, not a translation's best guess at it.
Use both together
Draft the bulk of a document in your working language, machine translate it as covered in Writing for International Trade, then dictate directly over the specific lines that need to be exact — yourself, or with a native speaker on the line reading it back to you. Select the translated sentence in FusionMD or PolyWrite, start Dictation, and speak the replacement; no re-formatting needed, it drops straight into the existing paragraph.
Who this is for
Write a real letter home without fumbling accented characters or a script you've never typed before.
Where the exact wording of one line — a figure, an offer, a commitment — matters more than the rest of the document.
Dictate a line in another language the way a native speaker would actually say it, not the way a translator guesses it.
Hand them the microphone instead of asking them to proofread a translation after the fact.
Your words, in their language, said the way you'd actually say them.
No new keyboard layout to learn, no cloud translation service required for the sentences that need to be exact.