Google 翻‪訳‬ 4+

It's getting super good

The translation UI is getting much better. New translation OCR is now showing its strength. And they've re-added pinch zoom to get good translations at a distance. Super valuable at the museums in Japan!

Only one start off for lousy handling of partial or poor internet connection. I have the data downloaded for Japanese, but sometimes I just have to go full Airplane mode to get it to switch over to offline mode. Would give a solid 5-start rating if the engineering can get this figured out. Would be way better to use offline within about 5sec of not getting a result from online resources.

An mportant option is gone

I used Google Translate for playing japanese games. I took a picture, selected the text, and I could see how the kanji is read, on top of the translation. It was an important study tool. Now the translation appears on top of the photo automatically without me being able to turn it off. I see the translation, but I can’t see how the kanji is read.
It has an option to select the translated text and send to GT initial page, but the japanese text sent is not the original text, but an adaptation of the original that GT re-translated from English. And almost always, the word I wanted to see the reading, is changed for a synonym.
Funny how a simple option can ruin what was the best translation tool previously.

It used to be good. Now it’s frustrating.

Two years ago, it was amazing, especially with the live translation function. It wasn’t perfect but great for getting the gist. But since “Google Lens” became a thing, it became much worse. You can’t simply move the text the app sees to the text section without changing the languages manually, then copying it manually. This is especially user-hostile if the app isn’t picking up a few key characters and you want to type it into the app separately to get the full translation or proper context. Furthermore, lately the app locks up when it gets started or switches functions, even between apps. Google, I don’t understand why you insist on making user-hostile decisions. It was a great app before you incorporated Lens, and has just gotten worse. I can’t even recommend it to my co-workers anymore.

*update*
You folks respond months later with a feedback link that doesn’t work and inability to post. Is this a joke?

You want me to update my review? Seeing as how you obviously don’t actually care about the user, it just went down to 1 star. My feedback was pretty clear here and I’ll add to it:

-The lack of being able to copy the text on a picture and move that to the text input screen is user hostile. I have to change languages to make them the same (JP—>JP for example). That’s just silly. Give me the option in the Lens screen.
-The interface can also be really slow, slower than before.
-Kanji writing will sometimes just delete what I’ve input or won’t type out the kanji I wrote (and I have to choose it manually from the suggestions). This used to be an amazing tool even for Japanese people but now it’s unstable and unreliable. Might as well use another dedicated kanji app.
-There’s still inaccuracies in translating Japanese. Being aware of language nuances should be more of a priority and giving suggestions on alternate meanings or definitions is far more useful than trying to make your UI more frustrating and minimalist to use.
-Speaking of minimalist, clean doesn’t mean better. If I now have to click more things to access features that used to show up for me almost immediately like input history (which is much more useful than you think), that’s user hostile. I now have to click two icons to get there.
-I get you have to update to keep the app relevant and I understand that you should try new things but these changes are atrocious. I don’t know anyone that enjoys using this app anymore because the new UI has gotten frustrating to use for more than simultaneous Lens translations like street signs or menus.

デベロッパの回答 、

Hi there. We're sorry to hear about your experience. Could you please describe the issue you're experiencing in the Google Translate Help Community so we can investigate further: https://goo.gle/2tkDc6j? Thanks.