Google acquired WordLens a while back, eventually integrating its visual text translation technology into the Translate app. It only supported seven languages at the time, but today's v4.0 update adds a lot more, and Google is showing off the visual translation feature with a nifty Google Translate vs. “La Bamba” video.

The updated version of Translate, which you can get right now on APK Mirror adds 20 additional languages to the instant visual translation engine for a total of 27. The original seven are English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Here's what is new in the v4.0 update.

You can now translate to and from English and Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. You can also do one-way translations from English to Hindi and Thai.

The La Bamba video does a good job of demoing the visual translation feature. If you've never seen this technology in action before, it probably looks kind of science-fictional. It's mostly translating Spanish (obviously), but Google includes a few examples of more challenging languages too.

Another improvement in this update comes in the form of smoother conversation mode. Translations should be faster and more reliable even on a slow mobile connection. You can grab the APK right now or wait for it to roll out in the Play Store.

Source: APK Mirror, Google Blog