As a frequent traveller, it is beneficial to be able to read road signs in languages other your own.
Google Translate instant camera is a helpful aid in this regard. You can use your phone’s camera to translate text on road signs and even handwritten notes into your own language. All you have to do is point your camera lens at the foreign text.
Now to make the Google Translate app better, Google has recently upgraded the camera function with newer and better features.
You can now translate from 88 languages into 100+ languages
The instant camera translation adds support for 60 more languages, such as Arabic, Hindi, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese. Here’s a full list of all 88 supported languages.
What’s more exciting is that, previously you could only translate between English and other languages, but now you can translate into any of the 100+ languages supported on Google Translate. This means you can now translate from Swahili to French, or from Yoruba to Chinese, etc
You can automatically detect the language
You can now use a new feature “Detect language” to find out the language of the text you need to translate if you do not know the language. all you have to do is, select “Detect language” as the source language on the app and the Translate app will automatically detect the language and translate.
Say you’re traveling through Nigeria, where both Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba are spoken, and you encounter a sign. Translate app can now determine what language the sign is in, and then translate it for you into your language of choice.
Better translations powered by Neural Machine Translation
For the first time, Neural Machine Translation (NMT) technology is built into instant camera translations. This produces more accurate and natural translations, reducing errors by 55-85 percent in certain language pairs. And most of the languages can be downloaded onto your device, so that you can use the feature without an internet connection. However, when your device is connected to the internet, the feature uses that connection to produce higher quality translations.
A new look
Last but not least, the feature has a new look and is more intuitive to use. In the past, you might have noticed the translated text would flicker when viewed on your phone, making it difficult to read. Google has reduced that flickering, making the text more stable and easier to understand. The new look has all three camera translation features conveniently located on the bottom of the app: “Instant” translates foreign text when you point your camera at it. “Scan” lets you take a photo and use your finger to highlight text you want translated. And “Import” lets you translate text from photos on your camera roll.
Launched in April 2006, more than 100 billion words were translated everyday as at February 2019.
Why not try out the the instant camera translation feature now by downloading the Google Translate app
