Microsoft Translator can now translate text from images
- Apr 21, 2016
- 2 min read
It’s no secret that Microsoft wants to grab a piece of Google’s pie when it comes to Translation software, so the latest update to Microsoft Translator comes as no surprise.
Microsoft Translator now supports image capture translation, a feature which has been available with Google Translate for some time now. Aside from this though, Microsoft also confirmed that it is bringing inline translations and language downloads for offline translations to the service.
To use the image capture translation feature, all you need to do is take a picture with the Translator app, or upload a photo into it to be translated. Initially, the feature will be available in 21 languages, but, unfortunately, will only be available to Android users running Android 6.0 Marshmallow, meaning only around 4.6% of all Android users will have access to it. In case you were wondering what those 21 languages are, here is the list: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Chinese (both simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, and Turkish.
Regarding the inline translation, it simply adds a fourth option below cut, copy and paste to translate text on a web page.
The final feature Microsoft has added is a number of new language packs. This feature, while announced over two weeks ago for iOS, is only just coming to Android and introduces 34 new language packs to work with the translator in offline mode. These include: Arabic, Greek, Romanian, Bosnian, Hebrew, Russian, Bulgarian, Hindi, Serbian, Catalan, Hungarian, Slovak, Chinese Simplified, Indonesian, Slovenian, Chinese Traditional, Italian, Spanish, Croatian, Japanese, Swedish, Czech, Korean, Thai, Danish, Latvian, Turkish, Dutch, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Estonian, Malay, Urdu, Filipino, Norwegian, Vietnamese, Finnish, Persian, Welsh, French, Polish, German, and Portuguese.
With all these extra features, it’s clear that Microsoft is serious about taking some of Google’s market share, but there is still a lot of progress to be made.
What do you think of Microsoft’s efforts to grab some of Google’s market share? Are you a fan of Microsoft’s translator? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: | Microsoft |
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Via: | Phandroid |
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Image Credits: | Android Police |
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