Google updates its translation app with new look and features

Google announced that it has updated its camera translation app Google Translate to feature a new design, more languages and feature called automatic detection to help make the app more accurate.

How the app works is that it translates foreign text in real time using the phone’s camera.

Google stated that it added support for additional 60 languages, such as Hindi, Malay and Vietnamese.

In total, the app supports 88 languages, with more than 10 languages spoken in Africa also supported.

Google said in a blog post: "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."

The company added an Instant camera in Translate that will automatically detect the language in text, so that users don’t have to figure out what they are looking at before translating.

"In the new version of the app, you can just select “Detect language” as the source language, and the Translate app will automatically detect the language and translate. Say you’re travelling through South America, where both Portuguese and Spanish 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," Google said.

The company has added Neural Machine Translation technology to instant camera too, which will help make the tool even more accurate.

Instant camera’s look has also been updated so that it is easier to read with less flickering, and now features the ‘instant’, ‘scan’ and ‘import’ functions at the bottom of the app.

Written by: Gabriella Steyn.

Guzzle Media