Google Word Lens translates written Japanese in realtime

The Google Word Lens app is now available in Japanese. You’ll never have to worry about taking a wrong turn on a busy Shibuya street or ordering something you wouldn’t normally eat.

The Google Translate app already lets you snap a photo of Japanese text and get a translation for it in English. But it’s a whole lot more convenient if you can just point your camera and instantly translate text on the go. With Word Lens, you just need to fire up the Translate app, point your camera at the Japanese text, and the English translations will appear overlaid on your screen—even if you don’t have an Internet or data connection. It’s every savvy traveller’s dream.

The instant translation feature Word Lens has support for Chinese and with Japanese now translate about 30 languages. Word Lens can translate both Simplified and Traditional Chinese to English, or the other way around.