Camera Translation: Translate Menus, Signs and Documents

Camera translation reads text from a photo and translates it: menus, street signs, product labels, letters from the bank, forms at the doctor’s office. You don’t have to type words in an alphabet you can’t read.

Accuracy depends more on the photo than on the app. Flat, well-lit, in-focus text translates well; curved bottles, handwriting and glossy laminated menus under a lamp are harder.

These guides explain how to get a clean result and when a photo is better than live camera mode.

A few habits make most of the difference: hold the phone parallel to the page, tap to focus, turn on the flash in dim rooms and photograph one section of a long menu at a time. For multi-page letters, contracts and manuals, translating the PDF file is faster and keeps the text in reading order. In AI Translator, the camera and PDF translation read Latin-script text, such as Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Vietnamese, and translate it into any of 98 languages.