Google’s Translate’s Instant Camera Translation Gets New Languages, Improved Features

Google is introducing some new upgrades for the Google Translate app’s instant camera feature. The instant camera feature, for those unfamiliar, allows you to point your phone’s camera at any text from the real-world, and Google Translate can translate that into any language you want.

With today’s update, Google is introducing support for 60 more languages, expanding the app’s support to a total of 88 languages. And unlike before, where you’d only be able to translate between English and other languages, you can now translate into any of the 100+ languages supported on Translate. Google’s also introducing the ability to detect the language of text automatically, so if you aren’t sure what language a text is in, you can simply point at it and Google will try to detect the language itself.

The company says it has also improved the experience of the feature to be more reliable. The translated text placed by the feature on the real-world were previously flickery, and the new update makes the text more stable, less flickery, and easier to understand. The updated interface also makes it easier to switch between all the three modes of the feature: Instant, Scan, and Import.

And lastly, Google says it is now using Neural Machine Translation for the instant camera translation feature which allows for improved accuracy in translations, reducing errors by 55-85%. The feature works even when your phone isn’t connected to the internet, but can provide better translations when there’s an internet connection.