Google Translate App Gets Improved Picture & Conversational Translation

As expected, Google this morning announced major updates to both their iOS and Android version of the Google Translate app. The new update brings both camera translations and conversation mode translation to the iOS app for the first time, as well as vast improvements to those features on the Android version of the Google Translate app.

Google Camera Translation

Google Camera Translation via the Google Translate app lets a user point their camera at a sign or words they do not understand and in real-time, it will auto-translate the text on top of the other words. It will basically vanish out the other language on the sign and replace it with the language you understand. This works with English to and from French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish on the new iOS and Android translate app. More language support is coming in the future Google said.

Here is a picture of it in action:

Google Conversational Translation

The conversational translation in the Google Translate app makes it more fluid and faster to talk to one person in your desired language and have it automatically translate verbally to them. Then it listens to their response and translates that back to you. Google said that all you need to do is simply tap the mic to start speaking in a selected language, then tap the mic again, and the Google Translate app will automatically recognize which of the two languages are being spoken, letting you have a more fluid conversation. For the rest of the conversation, you won’t need to tap the mic again.

Here is a picture of this feature in action:

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.