Google Translate for iOS Gets Handwriting Update

Google might be best known for its Internet search engine, but the fact of the matter is that the company has its hands in a lot of technologies. One technology that the company is paying more attention to is its Google Translate application, which has been geared towards the iOS system. While the app has been very good at translating spoken words and typed words, the update also translates handwriting.

The application update was released just one day after Apple debuted iOS 7. The Google Translate 2.0 version lets you actually write characters in more than 49 different languages and then translates what you are writing. Obviously, there are only a handful of languages that are going to need this function. Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, as well as other languages that don’t use the Latin alphabet, are expected to get the most use out of this upgrade.


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The application has strengthened its holding on the translation services market. Google has made this application about as useful as any other translation application that is out there. As is the case with the previous versions of the app, the handwriting can be translated into print, and then with the push of an icon the word can be read out loud.

Because of this, the application can actually serve as a sort of teacher for people who want to learn another language. The application has also added a couple of new languages that it is now able to translate. Bosnian, Cebuano, Hmong, Javanese, Khmer, Lao, and Marathi have all been added to the app’s rather extensive library of languages.

The update was announced on Google’s blog and requires at least iOS 5.1 in order to work properly.