How to translate text using Google Lens on your smartphone

Many of you may happen to have a travel bug. After all, who doesn’t like chilling by the beach, sipping on a cool drink, or maybe on a soul-soothing bowl of hot soup on a snowy mountain, by a bonfire? And of course, taking Instagram-worthy pictures in colourful new outfits, maybe against a bustling market in the city, or deep in the forest by a waterfall?

However, also comes with it the hassle of trying to figure out the signboards in an airport, or the menu card in a restaurant in a foreign land. Well, the very camera you use to click those amazing pictures on your trip, can come to your rescue here too, by translating text in real time. Wondering how to do that? Here’s how.

How to translate text in pictures using Google Lens

We’ve put together this little step-by-step guide on how to translate text on your smartphone, using  Google Lens. Read on.

1. Open the Google Lens app on your phone. The app is supported by both, Android devices as well as iPhones.

2. On the home screen of the app, tap on “Search with your camera.”

3. Here, you should see a couple of options you can scroll through at the bottom, to decide just what kind of a search you want to run.

4. Tap on the “Translate” option, which is on the extreme left.

5. Now, focus the camera on the restaurant menu, signboard, or just about anything that contains the text you’d like to translate.

6. Once done, tap on the shutter button.

7. You should see two languages mentioned on the top. These are basically the languages you’re looking to translate the text from, and the language you want to translate it to. Here, you can also make a manual selection by tapping on the same and scrolling through the list of available languages.

8. Here, tap on the “Open in Translate option at the menu which appears on the bottom, and that’s it! Google Translate should give you a fairly accurate translation of what’s mentioned in the text, for the most part.

What’s cool is, you can also translate text from images you may have stored in your smartphone gallery. All you have to do is swipe up from the camera interface, and all the pictures stored in your gallery should appear. Here, select the album in which the picture is stored, and click on it. Google Lens will automatically detect the text in the image, and you should be able to translate the same using the aforementioned Google Translate option.

ALSO READ: How the interactive language tutor on Google Search can help improve your vocabulary

Using Google Lens along with the Translate app, you can now ensure you’re never lost or confused in a foreign land again, and can get around with ease. Bear in mind though, the tool may not be entirely accurate 100 per cent of the time, and you may want to consider asking a local for help, or even learning a new language in your free time.