Google Translate recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, and they’re not done yet. Today they’re announcing a new feature for Android called Tap to Translate, that will speed up your translations from any app. Oh, and they’re also adding support for Chinese to Word Lens.
The Tap to Translate is as cool as it sounds. All you have to do is copy the text from a chat, comment, web page..whatever, in whatever app you’re in and a translation will pop up for you…seriously cool. The translation pops up in a ‘Chat Head’ style bubble, and you can do this over and over again till you’re done.
The Tap to Translate feature works in all 103 languages supported by Google Translate and even works offline. Check out how it works:
The new feature does require Android 4.2 to run, but according to the latest figures, that’s 88.5% of all Google Android devices currently in the wild.
The other big announcement, at least for Android is the new support for Word Lens in Chinese, bringing the number of languages supported by Word Lens to 29. Word Lens gives an instant visual translation of any text in a compatible language, basically you point your phone at a sign, menu etc. and the words instantly morph into English.
The update to Google Translate for Android will begin rolling out to devices over the next couple of days, so keep an eye out for an update notification in Google Play.
Somehow I missed that this got written up. What an awesome feature