Translate images

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.

1. On your Android phone or tablet, open the Translate app .
2. Choose the language you want to translate to and from.
   • From: At the bottom left, choose a language or tap Detect language .
   • To: At the bottom right, choose a language.
3. At the bottom of the text box, tap Camera .
   • To translate the whole text instantly: Tap Instant .
   • To translate part of the document: Tap Scan   Capture .
   • To translate text from a photo you’ve already taken: At the bottom right, tap Import .
4. Highlight the text you want to translate or tap Select all.

Help improve text recognition

The photos you scan and import in the Translate app get sent to Google for text recognition. You can choose to allow Google to keep the images for future product improvement.

To turn "Improve camera input" on or off: 

1. On your Android phone or tablet, open the Translate app .
2. Tap Menu   Settings   Data usage.
3. 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.

Important: Translations of small, badly lit, or stylized text may not be accurate.

1. On your Android phone or tablet, open the Translate app .
2. If needed, choose the language you want to translate to and from.
   • From: At the bottom left, choose a language or tap Detect language .
   • To: At the bottom right, choose a language.
3. Tap Camera Instant .
4. Point your camera at the text you want to translate.
   • If you can't scan the image, tap Capture .

Tip: 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 Amharic Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bengali Bosnian Bulgarian Catalan Cebuano Chichewa Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Corsican Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish French Frisian Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hausa Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hmong Hungarian

Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Kazakh Khmer Kinyarwanda Korean Kurdish (Kurmanji) Kyrgyz Lao Latin Latvian Lithuanian Luxembourgish Macedonian Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese Maori Marathi Mongolian Myanmar (Burmese) Nepali Norwegian Odia (Oriya) Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Samoan Scots Gaelic

Serbian Sesotho Shona Sindhi Sinhala Slovak Slovenian Somali Spanish Sundanese Swahili Swedish Tajik Tamil Tatar Telugu Thai Turkish Turkmen Ukrainian Urdu Uyghur Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh Xhosa Yiddish Yoruba Zulu