You can use your phone’s camera to translate text in the Translate app. For example, you can use your camera to translate signs or handwritten notes.
Translate text in photos
You can translate text from new photos and photos you’ve already taken in the Translate app.
- On your Android phone or tablet, open the Translate app
.
- Pick the languages.
- At the top left, choose the language you want to translate or Detect language.
- At the top right, choose a language you read.
- Beneath the text box, tap Camera
.
- To translate the whole text instantly, tap Instant
.
- To translate part of the document:
- Tap Scan
Capture
.
- Use your finger to highlight the text you want to translate, or tap Select all.
- Tap Scan
- To choose an existing photo to translate, at the bottom right, tap Import
.
- To translate the whole text instantly, tap Instant
- Use your finger to highlight the text you want to translate, or tap Select all.
Turn "Improve camera input" on or off
The photos you scan and import in the Translate app get sent to Google for text recognition. To let Google keep the images for future product improvement, turn on Improve camera input.
To turn "Improve camera input" on or off:
- Open the Translate app
.
- Tap Menu
Settings
Data usage.
- Turn Improve camera input on or off.
Translate what you find through your camera
For some languages, you can point your phone’s camera at text to translate it. Translations of small, baldly lit, or stylized text may not be accurate.
- On your Android phone or tablet, open the Translate app
.
- If needed, select your source and target languages.
- At the top left: Select the source language you want to translate or tap Detect language.
- At the top right: Select the target language you want to translate to.
- Tap Camera
Instant
.
- Point your camera at the text you want to translate.
Important: If you're unable to scan the image, tap Capture .
If your translation is unclear, save the picture and select it from your gallery or camera roll.
Supported languages
You can translate these source languages into any of the languages supported by Google 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 |