How to Translate Any Text Instantly with Google Lens

Hi, it’s Jacob, your friendly teacher here. And in this video, I’m going to show you how you can translate foreign language text - for example, directions, restaurant menus, and signposts that you might see - into a language that you speak using the Google app.

So, on the Google app, I’m going to press the Google Lens button here, which takes me straight into the camera. At this point, at the bottom, I’ve got two different options. I don’t want to do a search in this instance, but I do want to use Translate, so I’m going to tap onto there.

And then, when you move your camera and point at some writing, it’s going to try and detect the language for you and then translate it into the language you’ve chosen. I’ve got English as my default.

And here you can see this train station in Mumbai. All of the signs are being translated into English for me. What’s interesting here is that in Mumbai, English is one of those options, which actually makes it a really good test because I can see here the translations are pretty close to what it does say in English.

And don’t forget to press that like button down below. Whatever language it’s in for you, it’s the little thumbs up.

And we can even have it read aloud to us if we want to by pressing the listen button on screen. “Welcome to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus.”

The other thing we can do here is we can actually tap onto the translation and it will do a Google search for us. So I can find more info on this train station by simply tapping on it.

And that’s Translate in Google Lens using the free Google app. It’s a great tool to have whenever you’re travelling.