Google Goggles Adds Text Translation

Posted 05/06/2010 at 5:58pm | by Ryan Whitwam

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A few months ago Google launched an Android App called Google Goggles that could recognize real life objects and text. It was an interesting demonstration of technology, but its usefulness was suspect. With the most recent update however, Goggles got a whole lot more interesting. The ability to translate text is now available from within the Goggles app. The feature is based on the translation engine Google showed off earlier this year at Mobile World Congress.

By simply snapping a picture the app will offer the user the option of translate the languages of English, French, Italian, German and Spanish. Google is working to improve the character recognition engine, and also to build in support for languages that use non-latin characters. Goggles is available on Android phones running version 1.6 or later. So those of you on Sense UI or MotoBLUR phones with 1.5 are, yet again, left out.

We're certainly excited about the possibilities this opens up for those who travel. Let us know if you've given it a shot and how it works.