Google Translate is a pretty useful app when you're on the road. The tech giant has been working to help travellers explore the world without the barriers of language, and its latest update does just that.
Google has added 20 new languages to its instant visual translation feature, the company announced on its blog. This means that in addition to the seven languages – English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish – that were made available in the last update, you can now use the app to translate signs between English and Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. You will have to download a language pack for each.
The app also now extends the visual translation feature, called Word Lens, to Hindi and Thai. Currently, you can only visually translate signs one-way, from English to Hindi or Thai. For the other way around, you'll have to write the word on the app with your finger or a stylus, or use the mic and say the word.
We tried out the English to Hindi visual translator and it worked well, for the most part. It isn't as instantaneous as you'd imagine, but it gets there within a few minutes. The app correctly translated words like "festival" and "valley" but oddly read "Chhattisgarh" as "Chandigarh".
Another feature Google introduced in its earlier update, and which it claims it has improved upon, is the ability to have real-time conversations in two different languages, with almost instant translations. The tech company says it has worked to make these conversations smoother and faster, especially given that many countries don't have seamless mobile data connections.
We were pretty impressed when we tried out the real-time conversation translator. It picked up French, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi and English surprisingly well, except for a few missed words which we're putting down to our non-native accents.
Watch the new Google Translate in action below:
courtesy: natgeotraveller.in
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