This functionality is built-in to the camera app from iOS 15 as Live Text.

You might have to turn it on both at ‘General/Language and Region’ and then in the Camera settings.

Live text is a joke in comparison to Lens, unfortunately. It's clear that Apple is a few decades behind on translation technology, their implementation is worse than Translate from when I was in school.

Live text translate is a pale shadow of what Google translate can do.

> for the purpose of using lens functionality.

Not sure what you are getting at. Isn’t the whole point of the google word lens feature that it translates foreign languages and replaces the text with your language in the image in real time?

> I was a Lens app user since iPhone 4. Then Google bought it and incorporated into the translate app. So, I installed it solely for the purpose of using lens functionality.

Yes, the lens functionality for translating text

Ah, so they are using the translation app solely for the translation functionality.