Android users, your Microsoft Translator experience just got a lot better. Today, Microsoft announced several upgrades to Microsoft’s translator app for Android, including image translation and inline translation.
Image translation was added to the Microsoft Translator app for iOS in February, but has been available for the Windows phone since 2010. The image feature is available in over 20 languages, according to a post on the company’s blog.
The new upgrades also feature inline translation, which gives Android users the ability to translate text from anywhere on their phone into any of the 50 languages supported by Microsoft Translator.
In addition, this release adds 34 languages to the available downloadable language packs for offline use, bringing the total number of downloadable language packs up to 43.
Through the release of these upgrades, Microsoft takes one more step towards closing the gap between its translator app and Google’s translator app. However, there are still a few noticeable differences.
Google’s app is able to translate phrases using just live images from your camera and matches the font of the translated text to the original font. Microsoft’s translator on the other hand, requires that users take a picture of the text before it can get to work.
Furthermore, Microsoft hasn’t enabled its app to match the translated font to the style of the original text, and instead produces a generic font across all translations made through the app.
Perhaps the greatest difference is the availability of the developer’s newest features. Google’s only outfitted its Android app with offline translation, Microsoft has extended this feature to Android and iOS.
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