Google Translate adds real-time camera conversion for 13 more languages
Starting this week, the Google Translate app for iOS and Android will be getting an upgrade of its camera mode to recognize an additional 13 languages. This takes the number of languages that Google Translate can do real-time text translation for to nearly 50.
The new languages include Arabic, Punjabi, Bengali, Vietnamese, Thai, Gujarati, Kannada, Nepali, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam. With Hindi included in the languages the app’s camera mode can recognize, Google Translate now supports four of the world’s 10 most spoken languages.
To make use of the camera mode feature on the app, users can navigate to the camera icon on the home screen. That brings up a prompt to line up the text that needs translating with the handset’s rear camera to take a photo.
Google Translate then uses a tech called Neural Machine Translation (NMT) – a machine learning process – which presents a translation in real time into the language of choice. How accurate that translation is can vary, though.
Camera support for the new languages is available to users on both iOS and Android and worldwide rollout has already begun.
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