Huge interest in December 2009 when Google launched its Google Goggles project - a piece of kit which takes pictures of objects and attempts to identify them.
The service was not specifically aimed at travel - but clearly had obvious connections given that users are able to point their mobile camera at a famous landmark and obtain information about what they are looking at.
Fast forward five months and Google's latest enhancement to the service is extremely interesting for travellers.
Using the same system users will be able to point their phone at a word or phrase, perhaps in a menu or guidebook, take a picture with the handset and press the translate button.
Once the language requirements are set, Goggles will return the phrase fully translated for the user.
Of course there will be a margin for error but Google is confident that the system can recognise words and phrases in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish and turn them into many other languages.
"We are hard at work extending our recognition capabilities to other Latin-based languages. Our goal is to eventually read non-Latin languages (such as Chinese, Hindi and Arabic) as well."