Google Translate for Android

Google Translate is getting a bevy of new features today that will make translating on mobile easier. Android gets a new feature that will get rid of the need to manually copy and paste into the Translate app, while iOS finally gets an offline mode. Additionally, the Word Lens instant visual translation feature now works on both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

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Google has announced that it will shortly be rolling out a new version of its Google Translate Android app, with two significant enhancements.

First, it is replacing the existing camera-based text translation with the far slicker Word Lens system. Google acquired Word Lens back in May of last year with this upgrade in mind. If you haven’t ever tried it, this was the app that brought home to me the truth of the Arthur C Clarke saying that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The near-instant augmented reality translation of signs and menus from any one of French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish–without needing an Internet connection–still makes me boggle every time I use it …

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