Google Translate on web gets a useful update: Here’s what’s new

Google has rolled out an important update to Google Translate. This update brings a new feature that will enable users to translate the text in images. Up until now, Google Translate users could translate text, documents and websites. However, text in images remained out of bounds. But with the latest update, Google Translate will enable users to translate information in almost every format using this tool.

That said, there is a caveat. This new feature, that is ability to translate text in images, is available on Google’s Translate’s web-based platform only. This means that interested people can access this feature on Google Translate on their web browsers only.

As far as usage is concerned, users can open Google Translate in their web browsers and upload the image that has the text that they want to be translate. Once that is done, they can either set ‘from language’ in the image to ‘Detect Language’ or pick one from the available languages and then set the language to which they want the text to be translated to. When all of these parameters are set, Google Translate on the web will translate text in the images almost instantaneously. Google Translate users can pick from 133 languages to translate the text from and translate the text to.

Image: Google

Interestingly, Google shows a toggle button at the top left corner under the language picker menu in Google Translate on the web that enables users to switch between the original image and the image that has the translated text. In addition to this, users also get the ability to copy the translated text and even download the translated text. Both these options, that is ‘Copy Text’ and ‘Download Translation’ appear on the top right corner of the window adjacent to the ‘Show Original’ toggle button.

Now, some users might argue that Google was already offering this functionality in Google Lens’ mobile app, which is true. Infact, reports suggest that Google Translate’s new feature is using the same generative adversarial networks (GAN) that powers the AR Translate feature for Google Lens. If anything, the Lens branding at the bottom of the page is a testament to it. But with today’s update, users can translate text in an image without switching back and forth their PCs and their smartphones.