Word Lens Offers Real Time Language Translation

[MacRumors]

Last night, QuestVisual has released an eye-catching iOS app called Word Lens. Word Lens is an augmented reality app for the iPhone and iPod Touch (with video camera) which offers real time translation of text. You simply point your device's video camera at a sign and the program translates and superimposes the translated text onto the video in real time. The demo video shows it in action:

Word Lens is a free download to prove its real-time word detection algorithms. In the free version, users can reverse or blank-out text in real time. Meanwhile language packs for Spanish to English and English to Spanish are available for $4.99 each. More language packs are in the works. Translations are done on a word-by-word basis, so context is not taken into account. The translation is also done on-app, so no network connection is required.

Augmented Reality has been a much hyped possibility. Apple introduced the ability for developers to do this real-time video manipulation back in iOS 3.1.

Article Link: Word Lens Offers Real Time Language Translation

 

[SBlue1]

holy ... !

 

[svalentine]

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Awesome!!!! Japanese to English and I will buy!!

 

[kopite19]

Pretty cool. A few more languages and this will be a must-buy

 

[Minimoose 360]

Well that's a game-changer

 

[macnisse]

Babel

Nice, that is very close to a real Babel fish... just add spoken language of choice to that, sweet!

 

[cal6n]

What could possibly justify 2 negatives here?

 

[Fel08]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Holy crap. That's freaking brilliant.

 

[Stampyhead]

Really cool use of this technology. Hopefully over time their translation engine will become more contextual, like Google translate. Word for word translation is only minimally useful in real life application.

 

[efp1]

I'm impressed by the augmented reality but this app is pretty useless, considering that their translations are the worst I have ever seen. The Spanish is extremely bad, hardly understandable. They even wrote the signs in Spanish incorrectly so that the English translation could be readable.

 

[rickdollar]

It may work on street signs but I sure couldn't get it to work on a printed page.

 

[dazzer21]

Well, that's got to be one of the most impressive things I've seen for a while! Who cares if the translation isn't 100% - as long as it says what the sign means, THAT'S GREAT!!!!! Extraordinarily great, in my view...

 

[Full of Win]

Add Chinese and I'd pay almost anything

 

[Angelchild]

It may work on street signs but I sure couldn't get it to work on a printed page.

From the AppStore description:
- does NOT recognize handwriting or stylized fonts

 

[AAPLaday]

Who needs a camera on an iPad ?

 

[talkingfuture]

That is spectacularly clever.

 

[acidfast7]

LOL

now the American tourists will stick out even more.

 

[japanime]

Well, that's got to be one of the most impressive things I've seen for a while! Who cares if the translation isn't 100% - as long as it says what the sign means, THAT'S GREAT!!!!! Extraordinarily great, in my view...

But that's the problem — the Spanish on the signs in the video is not correct to begin with.

Kudos to the developers for trying, though. Once they have refined this technology, it truly will be great.

 

[wschutz]

Well... given the screenshots... and being a native Spanish speaker... I would say the translator is making some serious (but basic) gramatical mistake...

Perhaps QuestVisual would like to revise the translation engine...

 

[Journojulz]

All i need now is a bluetooth headset in the shape of a little yellow fish!

Sweet!

If you don't think this is a fail because the translation is a bit wonky - get an imagination!

 

[freddiecable]

spot-on!

this thing is really amazing! iphone is not only changing the mobile phone industry. it is changing many industries - peoples perceptions of interacting with machines will be measured before and after iphone (iOS).

Who needs a camera on an iPad ?

 

[Lesser Evets]

Really cool use of this technology. Hopefully over time their translation engine will become more contextual, like Google translate. Word for word translation is only minimally useful in real life application.

The finesse of language and translation within computers is still very basic and rough. Google translate, and all translation software/sites, is still horrid, but it is far better than nothing.

Grammar check within a native language is still completely crazy. Half the noted corrections are incorrect assumptions by the programming, and several times more errors are uncaught. So it'll take time to get stuff like this program working well.

For $5, it's not bad if you go somewhere and want to make sure you stop at the stop sign and watch for falling bricks.

 

[baryon]

Amazing! And no network connection = it works when you need it on an iPod Touch, instead of "it never works because you first need to connect to the special login screen of the strange Wi-Fi if you're lucky enough to have a free one near you".

 

[Frosticus]

Wow, now that's a neat app! Hope to see more like this!

 

[Popeye206]

I don't care if it's 100%, something like this would be a valuable tool to have with you when traveling. Big thumbs up and I'm sure it will get better over time.