The latest app launched by Google is called “Google’s Word Lens” which is essentially a smartphone app that lets you point your camera at text and get an instant translation on-screen.
On Thursday, Google announced that Word Lens now supports Japanese, meaning you can go to Japan, point it at kanji characters — of which there are thousands — and see what the heck they mean right on your phone’s display.
As Google points out, you could already take a photo of Japanese text and get a translation with the Google Translate app, but Word Lens shows you the translation live as you move the phone around. Even better, it works when you don’t have internet connectivity.
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This app also works in reverse: You can have English text translated to Japanese. To see the app in action see the video below:
