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One big problem when travelling abroad is trying to understand signs that are in the native language. This is where Google’s brilliant free app Translate comes into its own, because it instantly translates foreign-language text into English. All you need to do is point your device’s camera at the sign. The app previously translated text from seven European languages (including French, Spanish German, Italian and Portuguese) into English. But it’s recently been updated to add 20 more languages (including Polish, Bulgarian and Turkish).

Open the app, (Android: bit.ly/1gXUeLU; iOS: apple.co/1WF8REL), set the dropdown menu at the top left to the foreign language you want to translate (we set it to French in the screenshots below) and the dropdown menu at the top right to English. Aside from English, you’ll notice small Download signs beside other languages. These are ‘language download packs’, which are useful if you want to use the app to translate that language when you’re offline (without mobile data or Wi-Fi).

Now tap the photo icon, then point your device at a sign you want to translate. The screenshot below left shows the French sign we wanted translating and to the right of that is what we instantly saw via the app. For mor information on how the app works, watch this amusing video (bit.ly/1E5LA8w) showing how the lyrics of La Bamba are instantly translated.