I tried it once on my tablet. If you're MTL and trying to use phones to translate, don't. You will get brain hemorrhage. Even translating using a library computer is preferable to translating on a phone.
Case in point. lol. Tried machine translating some chinese novels on a tablet. Almost made me smash my tablet.
I don't MTL either. But I do use the dictionary a lot since I know the grammar for korean but my vocab sucks. And reading/writing korean is super easy so no probs there either
Just try more and more then. Same with other language. For example, Japanese. For your main problem, I suggest you to get phone with big RAM with proper processors. Since typing a long passage nonstop will obviously burden the memory, and you may need attache like ext. key board as per suggested. Or just buy a laptop. Even a low spec-ed one will do for the job. It just need internet connections and voila. *Sorry for being late. Still... I wanted to help.
You could lock the dictionary and the translating app so whenever you close all apps those 2 will always remain You could buy a Windows tablet that's cheaper than a phone. Also attach an old keyboard to it
I use machine translation, but only for the for the pronunciations as I can only read a minimum amount of chinese. I mean as long as you're only listening to the MTL, then you're fine. But otherwise, I find it hard to translate on a device other than a laptop/desktop.