Google Translate app gets updated for 20 new languages, slower networks

NEW DELHI: Google said on Wednesday it has updated its Translate app, to enable instant visual translation to 20 more languages, from the seven it had earlier, including an update to translate text from a picture and enable real-time translation from voice over slow data networks.

Until now, Translate supported seven languages—English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

"You can now translate to and from English and Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. You can also do one-way translations from English to Hindi and Thai," said Barak Turovsky, Product Lead, Google Translate in a blog post on the company's website.

To enable translations from pictures to text in different languages, the company has made use of neural nets, an image recognition technology that is an interconnected network of nodes like the neurons in the human brain.

As part of the new update, the Translate app will work faster on slower networks, enabling real-time translation of voice conversations for 32 languages. "In addition to instant visual translation, we’ve also improved our voice conversation mode (enabling real-time translation of conversations across 32 languages), so it’s even faster and more natural on slow networks," added Turovsky.

These updates will be rolled out for Android and iOS over the next few days.