Eric Schmidt, Google CEO showed at Mobile World Congress this year, held from 15 to 18 February in Barcelona, a new prototype experimental android of visual search from the company, Google Googles, which can translate text that appears in photographs .

The prototype uses translation technology associated with recognition capabilities of images to create an additional layer of useful context. The User takes a picture with a phone and the Android application translates the text of the picture – for now, the system has only support for German-English translations.

The company describes the process as follows: the prototype connects the camera phone to a system of optical character recognition (OCR) that scans the text in the image and then translated into English with Google Translate.

The updated application is not yet available, and Google is being discreet about the release date of this update, but is expected to be launched to support photo-text translation in each of the languages supported by Google Translate.

Once the translations gains space on Google Googles, you can imagine how useful and interesting application will be for tourists who need quick translations of menus, street signs and traffic signals.

Via: Mashable.

Besides the new look, the service has implemented tools that help in the understanding of non-Latin languages such as Chinese, Arabic or Persian. For these languages, will be offered the option “show romanization, which will enable the understanding of the sound of words from a phonetic writing. You can also write in any language is from the Latin sounds of words, which will be converted to characters of the selected language, according to information from the PC World site

According to Tom Kratz, site CNET News, this is an important step in the Google translator, adding language that comes into service in recent years, but that was a bottleneck in the translation between languages Latin and non-Hispanics.

For translations into English service will also provide an icon that will hear the words translated, as explained awaneesh Verma, product manager at Google, the official blog post. Just click the icon for the speaker to hear the sentence translated. The instant translation, which comes as the User types the phrase to be translated, is also one of the new service.

Via: PCWorld.

Google Translate has served millions of users and helped them view web pages by translating them from unknown languages to the ones that, the users are more comfortable with. This service has been proven invaluable to the users Asia, where English is still not the predominant language. As of now, Google Translate has the capability of translating in 51 languages, covering almost the entire globe.

Now, Google has introduced new features and revamped the Google Translate website further increasing the potential of the service and enabling it to serve the users in more enhanced ways. Along with the new features, the service is also been given a new look and more tools, designed specifically for translation purposes. The all new Google Translate offers users with instant translation, along with the capability of reading and writing capabilities especially in non-Roman characters.

Google has also incorporated a new transliteration feature in Google Translate for languages such as, Hindi, Arabic, Persian etc. This new feature will enable the users to instantly translate their native language scripts into English, even without the need of a compatible scripted keyboard. Also, the new Google Translate features a ‘Text To Speech‘ functions, that enables the users to listen to their translations in English by clicking on the speaker icon.

Via Google Watch.

Since the onset of the Iranian unrest, Facebook has been overwhelmed with the influx of numerous posts, pages and newly created groups. So is the pressure on Google to translate millions of pages written in Farsi. Considering the gravity of these events. Google and Facebook announced that they have included Farsi in their language databases.

Via its official blog page, Facebook stated it has indeed included Farsi into its language capabilities and it will be available from tonight onwards. According to the statement, the Persian language version of Facebook was already developed, but Facebook felt the need to launch it in the midst of the Iranian crisis, to facilitate communication between concerned nationals and the outside world. Even with the launch of the Persian version, it should be noted that, translation is in its infancy and would take time to be perfected.

To enable viewing of Farsi pages in Facebook, the user’s browser should be set to Farsi. This would automatically display Facebook’s Farsi version. Facebook has stated that over 400 Persian speaking individuals have already voluntarily submitted numerous translations for the Farsi version.

Google also announced via its official blog the addition of Farsi in Google Translate, considering the events taking place in Iran. As the translation isn’t perfect in the translated pages, hence, Google is inviting users to submit translations by clicking on the ‘contribute a better translation’ on the translated pages.

Via TechCrunch