The Google Translate camera app has long been a source of quick and convenient translation. Simply hold up the camera to text that is in a language that you don’t understand, whether it’s a menu, street sign, or poster, and the camera will (theoretically) translate the text for you into the language that you understand. While this feature is handy, the upgrade for automatic detection of language takes the guesswork out of using the app. Say you are in a country where the people speak multiple languages, and you approach a sign that you don’t know which language the writing is in, instead of guessing and toggling through options on the camera app, the app not automatically detects the language.
Google Translate’s camera (or computer vision translation capabilities) also got an upgrade with an addition of 60 new languages for instant translation. Approximately 25 of the newly added languages, including Arabic, Swahili, and Urdu, are available for offline translations and require no network connection. However, translations are more accurate when your device is connected to the internet.
There’s also a new look with three features on the bottom of the app. “Instant” translates text into your language when you simply point your camera at it. “Scan” is used for when you take a photo of text to be translated, and highlight the text to translate into your native language. “Import” lets you translate text from photos that you have already taken.
Below are the languages from which you can translate:
Afrikaans
Albanian
Arabic
Azerbaijani
Basque
Belarusian
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Cebuano
Chichewa
Chinese
Corsican
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Esperanto
Estonian
Filipino
Finnish
French
Frisian
Galician
German
Greek
Haitian Creole
Hausa
Hawaiian
Hindi
Hmong
Hungarian
Icelandic
Igbo
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Javanese
Kazakh
Korean
Kurdish
Kyrgyz
Latin
Latvian
Lithuanian
Luxembourgish
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay
Maltese
Maori
Marathi
Mongolian
Nepali
Norwegian
Pashto
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Samoan
Scots Gaelic
Serbian
Sesotho
Shona
Sindhi
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Spanish
Sundanese
Swahili
Swedish
Tajik
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
Vietnamese
Welsh
Xhosa
Yoruba
Zulu
You can translate the source language into any of the languages supported in Google Translate.
