Translation apps are becoming very useful these days. Especially with their artificial intelligence baked inside the translator, it works flawlessly well. Speaking of translations, there are around 8000 different languages that are spoken around the world. With such a vast variety of different languages being spoken around the world. At times it can be a bit difficult to communicate, especially when you travel abroad or to a place where the native language is something which you don’t know or understand. In such scenarios, translation apps come in handy very much. Not only that, some of the translation apps, can also translate in real-time from the camera, and whichever text you point it towards, it will show the text translated. Most of us rely a lot on our smartphones for a lot of things, translation can be one of those.

So, using a traditional translator app can be a bit complex and hefty. As for that, you need to write the words which you need to get translated and then it will show it. However, if you are on-road or at a restaurant where the menu of the place is written in some other language, in such scenarios visual translation apps can be helpful. As they will directly translate from the camera and show you the menu in the language which you can understand.

Visual translation basically works on the principles of augmented reality and has been growing more and more. Apple and Google being some of the biggest tech giants work a lot on improving their artificial intelligence in understanding and helping humans in a better way.

So, in this post, we will be looking through a few apps which are available on both Android as well as iOS that can be used for visual translation with the help of AI. As of now the one major downside of using visual translation is that they cannot detect the language on their own, so instead, you have to enter manually the language from which you need to translate to the language you want it to be translated using your camera. Not to mention, the visual translation is very much limited to languages, so make sure before you use visual translations the languages you want is supported. So below we have a list of apps that support visual text translation.

See also: 7 Best Video Filter Apps for iOS and Android

Google Translate (iOS/ Android)

Google translate is one of the most reliable and promising translator apps. it just works flawlessly and gives relevant result almost every time. Lately, Google has also introduced visual translation using the camera, so all you need to do is install the google translator app and then tap on the camera button inside the app, it will launch the camera, make sure you have set the languages for translations. Now all you need to do is point your camera towards the text and it will show you in real-time the translated words, otherwise, you can even capture and then translate the texts by manually selecting them.

WayGo (iOS / Android)

There are very few alternatives to the Google translator app. WayGo is one such translator app that works good and users can rely on their results. The app supports some visual translations in texts written in Chinese, Japanese and Korean to English but, reverse translation is not offered. The app offers a very minimal UI and is very handy to use in day-to-day life. It comes in useful for people who travel to Asian countries. WayGo also translates even offline, but you need to download the languages beforehand, similar to what Google translate offers. To use WayGo below we have a guide for you.

1. Download and install the WayGo app on your iOS or Android device.
2. open the app and then tap on the flag of which you want to translate the texts, you can choose from a bunch of different countries, the flag icon should be located on the top right corner.
3. Now, simply align the desired text to be translated within the camera frame. Also, if you want to translate a text which is in vertical text, then you can use the flip button at the bottom left corner, this will help you in translating vertical texts.

Word lens (iOS/ Android)

One of the very famous app Word lenses is now acquired by Google. however, the original app is still lying on the Play store and app store. users can download and use the Word lens app to translate and it works pretty much as expected. Before Google translate app Word lens was one of the best visual text translator apps on the internet. it still performs pretty good and is totally fine to be used every day. The app can instantly translate texts between a total of six different language pairs starting from English ⇆ Russian, English ⇆ Spanish, English ⇆ French, English ⇆ Italian, English ⇆ German and English ⇆ Portuguese.

The Word Lens can also perform offline translations without any internet, but you need to have the languages downloaded beforehand to use it offline. Below we have a quick guide for you to teach you how to use the Word lens app on your mobile device.

1. First, you need to download and install the Word lens app on your Android or iOS device.
2. Open the app and then tap on the globe icon located at the bottom left corner of the screen inside the app.
3. Now, you need to download the required language translation packs, so that they can work offline as well.
4. Now return to the main screen and tap on the globe icon again and then it should open the camera mode of the app.
5. Here, you first need to select the language pair for translation from the top right corner of the screen, select the source and target language translation.
6. Finally, align the camera to the texts where it is written and it should translate it then and there only. The translated texts will be overlaid on the screen at that moment itself.

Bing Translator (Windows Phone)

If you are one of those who still rocks a Windows phone or a windows tablet then you can definitely use the Bing translator app. The Bing Translator app supports over 15 languages of translations that include Simplified Chinese, Greek, Turkish etc. along with popular languages like German, Spanish, Russian and more. You can also use the offline translation option from the Bing translator app. below we have a quick tour guide on how to use the Bing translator app to translate texts in your desired language.

Alternatively, you can also use the website version of Bing translate as well.

1. As usual, first, you need to install the Bing Translator app on your Windows device.
2. Open the app and then choose the camera icon on the welcome screen.
3. Now, tap on the language pair on the top screen and then select the source language and target translation languages.
4. Finally, wait for the text at the bottom to say Point at text and then hold the camera towards the text that needs to be translated.

just like any other translation app from the abovementioned Bing translator will also overlay the text on the screen when the translation is done successfully.

To Conclude

So, these were some of the best translator apps that also works as a visual translator. Visual translations typically make our translation tasks very easy and intuitive to use. Most of the time it comes in handy while we are travelling to a country whose native language is something which we don’t speak or cannot read. Using these translator apps can help you a lot in certain situations, our pick would be the Google translator app, as it is simply the best of all.

See next: Install Jailbroken Apps on iOS Without Jailbreak