WeChat recently released a slew of updates, including a few major changes. China’s most popular social platform started its global expansion a long time ago and a new feature is giving us another hint of its ambition: AR-based real-time translation.

After updating to version 6.6.7, the new feature can be accessed from the scan feature in the upright corner, which previously was one of the important entrance for WeChat users to launch the QR code scanner. Now this entrance connects one more feature – translation, by capturing an image of almost anything with either Chinese or English texts in it.

This camera-based translation function currently only supports translations between two languages, Chinese and English. How it works is pretty similar to the Waygo app: simply point and translate. The Waygo app was invented to help non-Chinese translate food menus and signages.

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