Google has
updated the Google Translate Android app with support for offline translation through offline translation packs for fifty languages, including French, Spanish, German, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. The app also allows translation of vertical text in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean through the mobile device's Camera.
The offline translation packs can be downloaded through the Offline languages section in the app menu where users can browse all the offline language packages available for download. To enable offline translation between any two languages, they just need to select them in the offline languages menu. Google clearly mentions that the offline models are less comprehensive than their online counterparts but they are ideal for casual translation.
Offline translation would be really useful in situations where users are traveling abroad with poor reception, are without mobile data access or are on International data roaming, which is extremely expensive.
The offline translation packs are available on Android 2.3 and above devices.
Google Translate is a free translation service that provides translations between 65 different languages. The Android Translate app lets users input text using voice, handwriting, and camera and also enables them to listen to translations spoken aloud. Users can also save their favorite translations for quick, offline access. Google had introduced camera-input support for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean in December 2012 though it was limited to horizontal text. The camera feature was integrated in August along with Google Goggles' optical character recognition (OCR) technology, to use the camera of an Android smartphone to input text without typing.
The Translate app is also available for iOS but it hasn't been updated after March 2012.
What's in this version (2.6)• Translate without a network connection with offline language packages (available on Android 2.3 and above).
• Translate vertical text in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean with your Camera.