Can't translate the menu? Let Google Goggles give it a shot

Can't translate the menu? Let Google Goggles give it a shot - Yahoo! News

I must have studied French for, oh, five years or so, but I have to admit: Drop me into a Parisian cafe with a non-English menu and I'm hopeless. Luckily, help for monolingual misfits like me is here in the form of the just-updated Google Goggles for Android, although the app — which translates text captured by your phone's built-in camera — is still rough around the edges.

Google Goggles, if you recall, is the still-in-beta Android app that identifies and cranks out search results for landmarks, product logos, book covers and other items that you've snapped with your phone's digital camera. Take a picture of, say, that big tall pointy-looking thing in Paris, and Goggles will tell you that you're standing in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Now Google Goggles adds a new feature in its just-released version 1.1: the ability to translate text in a variety of languages simply by aiming your phone's camera at, for example, that indecipherable menu item you're thinking of ordering. Just snap a picture, and wait a second or two for Google to take a stab at a translation. (You'll need an Android-based smartphone to use Google Goggles, with version 1.6 or higher of the Android OS.)

Five languages are supported — English, French, Italian, German and Spanish — and Google says it's "hard at work" on other "Latin-based" languages, and will "eventually" be able translate languages such as Chinese, Hindi and Arabic.