Google Translate is a must-have travel app, and now it just got better
By Brandon Loo, July 12 2019
Business travellers will know first-hand the struggles of deciphering a foreign language when overseas. Many apps aim to make this easier, including Google Translate, which is rolling out some improvements to its 'instant camera translation' feature.
If you haven't already discovered Google Translate, or experimented with its camera translation capabilities, put this free app on your list.
Yes, you can manually type in a phrase for translation – although it's laborious, you'll probably make some mistakes when dealing with unfamiliar words, and then how do you cope with Asian languages packed with non-Western characters?
Instead, just point your smartphone's camera at some words and watch the magic happen as an English translation pops-up almost straight away.
I used Google Translate on a recent trip to Japan, where it proved indispensable from dealing with local medicines when I was under the weather (left) to deciphering a restaurant kiosk booking screen (right).
The translations aren't perfect, but are more than sufficient to get the key messages across
Google's latest update doubles down on the functionality, beginning with auto-detection of languages as well as more source languages, including many in the Asia-Pacific region such as Vietnamese and Māori, for a total of 88 languages ready to be translated.
The output can now be translated into more than 100 other languages, including translations between non-English pairs such as from Japanese to Korean.
Finally, some tweaks behind-the-scenes means more accurate and natural translations with improvements of 55-85% in certain language pairs.
Most languages can be downloaded offline so you can use the camera feature without roaming internet data. However, the best results are obtained from being online.
Google Translate's instant camera feature still has three modes – 'instant' for live translations, 'scan' for taking a photo a selecting with your finger what you want to be translated, and ''import' for loading up images already in your camera roll. You can download the app from Google Play or the Apple Store.
Also read: Here are the five best translation apps for business travellers
Based in Perth, Brandon enjoys tucking into local delicacies, discovering new cocktails, and making aeroplane food look good on camera.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
25 Mar 2014
Total posts 219
Great program but no good to me in China
13 May 2016
Total posts 40
Why No good in China?
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
25 Mar 2014
Total posts 219
Would not work for me, I assumed because of google ban.
Virgin Australia - Velocity Rewards
13 Jan 2015
Total posts 580
The problem I've had in Japan is that several places write the letters vertically (whether it be in a menu or a sign or whatever) and the app can't recognise this so it ends up translating each individual character rather than the full vertical word
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
22 Oct 2016
Total posts 11
If you can't use something Google in China, in the URL box instead of typing in www.google.com/.... try typing in www.elgoog.com/... Used to work when I lived in Beijing 10 years ago.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
25 Mar 2014
Total posts 219
Recently even useless with VPNs, but being an app just dies.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
13 Nov 2018
Total posts 118
Special regions such as Shanghai allow goo
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
25 Mar 2014
Total posts 219
On that Concorde Inknow certain areas like near GZ airport and Shenzhen work, is there a map where goo works
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
13 Nov 2018
Total posts 118
Bit hit and miss. I downloaded the Simplified Chinese language portion and put my phone in airplane mode to translate outside the economic zones. But it doesn’t work too well. This is when learning a few phrases and characters is truly beneficial.
03 Feb 2018
Total posts 72
Good for travel. And sometimes the translation is accurate (I think this depends a bit on which language). But beyond that... if the language is catered for by linguee or by Collins Online Dictionary, it's more likely to give you a better translation (even if UX isn't as good).
I work as an ESL teacher. My regular class is elementary level. While we prefer to explain meaning with simple English, some of the newcomers revert to Google Translate when it gets tough.
One of my Mongolian students got herself very muddled because Google Translate gave her misleading translations.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
13 Nov 2018
Total posts 118
English isn’t an easy language to learn. It is an amalgamation of many languages and is quite dynamic.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
13 Nov 2018
Total posts 118
This is old news. I’ve been using Google Translate for years.
Hi Guest, join in the discussion on Google Translate is a must-have travel app, and now it just got better