Despite its flaws, this app is a must-have for traveling or connecting with someone who speaks a different language. Conversation mode is almost like having a personal translator, though it still has a ways to go. Word Lens is still a bit finicky, but it works well for street signs and other printed text. The free app keeps getting better at helping you communicate in another language and comes with tons of features. Offline translations are now available for nearly all of the languages in the app. However, they still appear to be good enough for basic translations that travelers might need. One thing to note is that these language packs are not as comprehensive as the online databases are when you're fully connected to the Internet. You'll need to download both languages for translations to work, so keep that in mind. Since it's still common to travel without an international plan for your phone, that's an especially useful feature.Īs you can imagine, these language packs are pretty hefty (from 150MB to 300MB, based on what I've seen), but the functionality they afford is worth it. The app also lets you download language packs for offline support, so you can get translations without a connection. Overall, there are a lot of extras, all of which come in handy. And finally, the SMS translation feature can pull in any of your text conversations for quick processing. Text-to-speech output is available for select languages, and can be a huge help when you're dealing with unfamiliar phonetics. The app automatically keeps a history of your translations, and lets you flag any of them for easy access later (even when offline). Along with the star features, Translate has many other tools that make it incredibly handy.

Google translate picture scan