IT abroad: Google’s Goggles app. learns Russian

Google has unveiled a new version of its Goggles app. for Android devices. The application can be freely downloaded from Android Market.

Goggles 1.5 boasts the new optical character recognition and translation of Russian. Since Google Goggles launch it has been able to recognize and translate text in a number of different languages, as long as the language used Latin characters.

The app. works as follows: smartphone owner launches Goggles app., captures the text with a built-in camera while the program performs its recognition. The recognized text can be translated into more than 40 languages.

Google has also updated the app’s interface by adding a map view, which shows user’s Goggles image search history on a map so he can quickly zoom and find a query from a particular location.

Google Goggles application was launched in 2009. Its options include recognition of bar codes, photos of the sights, logos, works of art. Goggles is supported by Android and iOS.