Google has brought in optical character recognition (OCR), a feature that helps translate images of words, to its update Google Translate for Android applicaiton.

The Android version of Google’s language translation service has translated several languages worldwide for some time now. The new Google Translate app for its mobile operating system, however, includes the ability to translate text from images.

The search giant said that the updated Google Translate taps on the power of OCR from its Google Goggles service to break down images and translate them to text.

“This makes Google Translate for Android one of our most intelligent and machine learning-intensive apps. Speech recognition, handwriting recognition, OCR, and machine translation all rely on powerful statistical models built on billions of samples of data,” said Etienne Deguine, associate product manager for Google Translate.

Google added that its OCR ability now covers Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish languages, with more to come.

The updated Google Translate for Android, which depends on an internet connection, offers a hand when on local holidays, but could charge expensively when roaming outside the country.

(More: Google Translate Now Translates One Million Books Worth of Text Daily)

Source: Google Translate (Google Play Store) | Google Translate Blog

Image: Google Translate (Google Play Store)

About Francis Rey Balolong

A coffee junkie who spends most of his time writing about the latest news on social media and mobile technology. I would definitely consider myself a nerd (in the coolest most hipster way possible). That being said, I love technology, music, writing, and all things mobile. Follow me: Google+ Twitter

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