It works...kinda.
Screenshot by Aloysius Low/CNETIt's easier than ever to get around in South Korea -- assuming you have Google's Translate app downloaded on your phone.
The Translate app has just been updated with Korean language support for its Word Lens tool. Just point your phone's camera at Korean text and watch it translate into the language of your choice in real time.
Translating Asian languages can often be tricky. They have a different alphabet system with grammar rules, and one word can have several different meanings and pronunciations. Google uses machine learning to improve its translations, using neural networks to recognise letters.
The Word Lens tool already supports Asian languages such as Japanese and Mandarin. But there's still progress to be made. Thai and Vietnamese aren't fully supported yet in the app.
"We'll continue to bring neural machine translation to more languages, here in Asia and beyond," said Barak Turovsky, group product manager for Google Translate in a statement to CNET.
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