At the recently concluded Google I/O developer’s conference, a lot of eyes and ears were on improvements that the company was giving Google Lens. While Google Translate did make an appearance in both Lens and Google Go as well, there really wasn’t much of a focus on it, understandably so. But it looks like it’s being readied for an update that will give it a “new camera translation”, “better translation quality”, “more languages supported”, and other major to minor changes.
According to the APK Insight post on 9 to 5 Google, there are several strings in the version 5.29 update of Google Translate that has started rolling out. While these features aren’t yet enabled or detectable, it’s still interesting to see what they have in store for users. One of these things is automatic language detection. Currently, you still have to manually choose the language you want to translate to and from but once it’s updated, it should be able to detect language on its own and based on your default language/languages.
The Translation app will also have a new instant camera feature. The translation will be overlaid on the camera view so you’ll be able to see the sign or document or menu that you’re translating as if it was already written in your preferred language. This is actually what they’ve also shown will happen on Google Lens with the new filters and modes that they will be releasing.The Instant button will be seen on the bottom bar, beside the Scan and Import mode.
The folks over at 9 to 5 Google were able to enable the features so we can see what it will look like. However, since they are still strings on the update, there is always no guarantee that it will look like this when the update is rolled out or even if this feature will ever be enabled. But since Lens will have these features, there’s a good possibility we’ll also see it on Translate.
Version 5.29 of Google Translate is already available but there isn’t really any major changes there. The changelog did indicate that there are improved offline translations and upgraded language downloads.
