While translator apps have grown to become a common thing, what the latest version of the Microsoft Translator is coming in with is something you won’t find in quite a number of translators out there.
Of course, no one doubts that English is the most used language in all parts of the world, but the fact that the world is comprised of a multilingual population, having a Translator app is no longer an option for people who always want to understand what other people around them are saying.
Google went a step ahead and added the ability to translate images in its Translator app last year. At the time, the feature supported up to 20 languages, but the company promised to increase this limit. It’s now Microsoft’s turn to do the same, with the Windows OS giant ensuring that its Translator app is able to scan as well as translate images on the fly. At the time of this writing, the Microsoft Translator app supports up to 43 languages and the good side of the story is that they all work offline.
Microsoft Translator App update coming to Android too
In addition to rolling out the updates to the official Windows app, Microsoft will also be pushing the same abilities to the most popular platform – Android. Once you have updated this application on your Android device, you will be able to point to a sign using your phone’s camera and the said sign will instantly be translated and the results displayed on the screen.
It gets even better as this feature will also work perfectly from within the app. This means that you can still scan images stored in your phone’s gallery, social media, email, Google Photos and other platforms and get an immediate translation of the same in any of English, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch, Russian, Italian, Greek, Danish, Czech, Portuguese, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Traditional Chinese, Norwegian, French and German.
There is more to this Microsoft Translator app’s update. The new version also brings an inline translation engine available all throughout the system such that whenever a foreign word is detected, all users have to do is select it and proceed by opening the extended menu (3-dot menu) and in there they’ll find a translate option that pops up a window that eventually takes care of everything.
The company’s translation features have further been baked deep into the Hub Keyboard. Here, you only need to press the Translator icon located within the keyboard and enter the sentence. Proceed by selecting your preferred language of output and then tap it instead of the initial piece. However, the Hub Keyboard is still limited to a few markets that include the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Philippines, India, Australia, Singapore and the U.S.