Translate images

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.

1. On your iPhone or iPad, open the Translate app .
2. 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.
3. 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 .
4. 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 on “Improve camera input.” 

To turn "Improve camera input" on or off:

1. On your iPhone or iPad, open the Translate app .
2. At the bottom right, tap Settings  Camera input.
3. 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.

1. On your iPhone or iPad, open the Translate app .
2. 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.
3. Beneath the text box, tap Camera .
   • If needed, at the bottom, tap Instant .
4. 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.