Google has introduced 20 new languages for its mobile translation application, which reads and converts text in any language desired by users. With the update, mobile users can now translate 37 languages using photos, 32 by voice, and 27 through real-time video.
Google makes translation faster, smoother
According to the tech giant, users won’t require an internet connection to translate a language. Google’s smartphone app can read and translate the text quickly in 27 languages now. In addition, picture mode translation, which needs an image of the text, now supports 37 languages.
In a blog post, Google said, “Convolutional neural networks” is the latest technology that helps in identifying letters and words by clearing the background. Google said it is working to make voice translation “faster and smoother” in the Translate app, which helps users translate street signs, ingredient lists, instruction manuals and many other documents.
Google started the real-time text translation facility with seven languages: English, Russian, French, Italian, German, Portuguese and Spanish. The new languages added are Norwegian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Indonesian, Croatian, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Czech, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Turkish and Ukrainian. In addition, one-way translation of English to Hindi and Thai is also available.
Two main features updated
“Today’s updates knock down a few more language barriers, helping you communicate better and get the information you need,” said Google Translate Product leader Barak Turovsky. “We’ve still got lots of work to do.”
Though most of the content available on the internet is in English, only 20% of the world speaks English, said Turovsky. Approximately 100 billion words are processed each day through Translate, and nearly 95% of those occur outside the US.
The new update from Google is primarily related to two features that were added to Translate in January. Those features are Word Lens, which is real-time video translation, and a conversation feature that converts bilingual speech in real-time. With Word Lens, a user just needs to point to a sign or any text with their phone’s camera. The text will be immediately be translated into another language.
Apart from the regular updates to improve Translate, the internet firm also started Translate Community, where anyone could provide the correct translations. The forum, which began last year, has already contributed around 100 million translations.
