CAPE TOWN – Google announced that will update itsGoogle Translate's camera translation feature to add more languages, automatic detection and it will have a new design.
How the feature works is that it translates foreign text in real time using the phone’s camera when it is pointed at an image with words.
Google stated that it will add 60 additional languages which will mean the app will now support 88 languages.
The app has over 10 African languages such as Afrikaans, Sesotho, Igbo, Somali and more.
Google said in a 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 that the new update will have a “Detect language” feature that will automatically detect the language in the text, so that users don’t have to figure out what they are looking at before translating.
Google said: "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."
The company also added Neural Machine Translation technology to the instant camera, which will help make the tool 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.
The new updates are available on the Google Translate app.