Can’t type it, write it says Google

With QWERTY keyboards ruling the roost more than ever, the art of writing on a sheet of paper seems to be on the wane. Google however, has not forgotten the manual method.

For words that cannot be keyed in with the regular keyboard, such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters, they can now be simply written into Google's translate function. Users could choose the handwriting selector in the translation field for compatible languages and use their mouse for forming characters.

According to Google's blog post, it now offered handwriting support for 45 languages. The feature had been undergoing beta testing on Android devices since last year.

This handwriting input feature also worked with the internet search giant's Google's Gmail, Chrome and Drive products.

Google said in its blog post: "Sometimes it's easiest to just write it down."

Meanwhile according to Hugo Barra, Google's VP of Android Product Management, who spoke to the The Times, Google planned to make real-time translation devices that would translate language for simple conversation across language barriers.

The system was already ''near-perfect'' between some languages, according to Barra, especially in environments where there was no background noise to confuse the input detection.

Google already offered Google Translate, for text translation, as also entire webpage translation on the web.

Now the goal was to make instant back-and-forth conversation translation a practical, usable reality that could make it possible for someone to accomplish everything they needed to in an unfamiliar language without learning knowing anything about it. This would however, be several years away from becoming a shipping product.

According to commentators for Google which had Google Now, the personal assistant and automated digital planner that aspired to anticipate every user need, building an instant human translation engine was not a surprising move.

What was surprising was that it worked ''perfectly'' in certain conditions right now, and that this could be a reality in just a few years time.