Our phones have the ability to make sense of other languages (and it requires minimal effort on our part).

If you're a frequent traveler, you may frequently encounter signage or other text in foreign languages. That's all well and good if you have enough knowledge to piece together a translation, but if you can't even understand the alphabet in question, you're faced with a much bigger challenge.

The good news is that your phone's camera can recognize and translate just about any text in seconds, even if the language uses an entirely different script. While a translation app may seem like the obvious choice for this task, it's actually not always your best bet. Depending on the languages involved and the context, you may sometimes need more than one tool. Luckily, your phone's camera is all you need to translate pretty much anything in the real world.

For over a decade now, the Google Translate app has offered a dedicated camera mode. Simply install the app from the Google Play Store on Android or the App Store on iOS, open it, and tap the Camera icon located at the bottom of your screen. This will open up a viewfinder, allowing you to point your phone's camera at anything in the real world.

You can select any two of Google Translate's hundreds of languages for the translation. The default "Detect language" option in the source field is handy if you've come across a language you cannot identify. The app translates text in real time, so you don't even need to capture an image.

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