Google is expanding the number of languages its camera translation app is capable of understanding.

Afrikaans, Arabic, Hindi, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese are among the 60 additional languages supported, bringing the total number to 88, in a bid to help more people travelling abroad.

The Google Translate app allows users to hold up their smartphone and take a photo of any text they see for an instant translation.

As part of a number of upgrades to the app, people can also now translate between any of the available languages, having previously been limited to translations between English and another language.

Technology known as Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is being built into the app to provide more accurate and natural translations, which the tech giant claims can reduce errors by more than 55% in certain language pairs.

A language detection option is also now available to assist people travelling in places with multiple languages, such as South America where both Portuguese and Spanish is spoken.

Seamless translation

Xinxing Gu, product manager for Google Translate, said: “Instead of trying to guess, the Translate app can now determine for you what language the sign is in, and then seamlessly translate it for you into your language of choice.”

Google said that as well as a new look to the app, it has reduced flickering to make text more stable.