How to Translate Anything Using Your Smartphones Camera

So imagine a situation that you are in foreign country, and obviously you don’t know their language. Instead of carrying a pocket translator or dictionary wouldn’t it be great if we could use our smartphones camera to translate road signs and other visual messages. Well, it is possible using Google translator. Google translator app allows us to translate visual text using your smartphone’s camera.


Translate Anything Using your Smartphones Camera

  • First, you need to install the Google translator app, if you are an Android user, then it would be pre-installed on your Android device, and if you are an iPhone user, then you can download it from App store.
Download Google Translator – Android | iOS
  • Once it is installed, launch it to set up the translator. Select your primary language and check the translate offline option so that you can use it offline.

  • First you need to set the language to be translated, tap the drop down menu and select the language which you want to translate. In my case, I want to translate Bengali
  • If the language you want to translate has a download icon, then you need to download the language package to use it offline.
  • Now select the secondary language to which you want to translate the language. Here I will select English.
  • Tap the camera icon to open the camera. Now point the camera to the message (text) which you want to translate. Make sure you properly align the text otherwise it won’t be able to translate it.


  • After it is properly aligned, it will automatically translate the text into the desired language.


Here’s a quick video on Google Translator:
  • Note the camera mode only supports 37 major languages while you can translate up to 103 languages by typing the text.
You can also use speech input by tapping on the microphone icon.