You can use your phone’s camera to translate text in the world around you with the Translate app. For example, you can translate signs or handwritten notes.
Translate text in photos
You can translate text in photos you’ve already taken. You can also take a new photo in the Translate app and translate text on the new photo.
- On your Android phone or tablet, open the Translate app
.
- If needed, pick the languages.
- At the top left, choose Detect language or the language you want to translate.
- At the top right, choose a language you read.
- Beneath the text box, tap Camera
.
- To instantly translate the whole text, tap Instant
.
- To translate only part of the document, tap Scan
tap the round icon above the Scan icon
use your finger to highlight the text you want to translate, or tap Select all.
- To choose an existing photo to translate, at the bottom right, tap Import
.
- To instantly translate the whole text, tap Instant
- Use your finger to highlight the text you want to translate, or tap Select all.
Turn "Improve camera input" on or off
When you use Scan or Import
to translate photos in the Translate app, those photos are sent to Google for text recognition. To allow Google to retain images for future product improvement, you can turn “Improve camera input” on.
To turn "Improve camera input" on or off:
- On your Android phone or tablet, open the Translate app
.
- At the top left, tap Menu
Settings
Data usage.
- Turn Improve camera input on or off.
Translate what you find through your camera
For some languages, you can translate text by pointing your phone’s camera lens. Translations of small, badly lit, or stylized text could be less accurate.
- On your Android phone or tablet, open the Translate app
.
- If needed, pick the languages.
- At the top left, choose Detect language or the language you want to translate.
- At the top right, choose a language you read.
- Tap Camera
.
- If needed, at the bottom, tap Instant
.
- If needed, at the bottom, tap Instant
- Point your camera at the text you want to translate.
Tip: If needed, you can tap Pause translation or Continue translation.
Supported source languages
Below are the languages from which you can translate:
Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bengali Bosnian Bulgarian Catalan Cebuano Chichewa Chinese Corsican Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish French Frisian Galician German Greek Haitian Creole Hausa |
Hawaiian Hindi Hmong Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kazakh Korean Kurdish Kyrgyz Latin Latvian Lithuanian Luxembourgish Macedonian Malagasy Malay Maltese Maori Marathi Mongolian Nepali Norwegian Pashto Persian |
Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Samoan Scots Gaelic Serbian Sesotho Shona Sindhi Slovak Slovenian Somali Spanish Sundanese Swahili Swedish Tajik Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh Xhosa Yoruba Zulu |
Supported target languages
You can translate the source language into any of the languages supported in Google Translate.