Word Lens uses your smartphone camera to translate text on the fly

By on Dec 17, 2010 at 8:35 AM
Software December 17, 2010

If you frequently travel, the application we’re about to tell you about may pique your interest. Word Lens is an application developed by Quest Visual that uses your iPhone’s camera to translate text from one language to another on the fly. Try to envision what would happen if Yelp’s “Monocle” feature were to be mashed together with Google Translate. Launch the application, aim your iPhone’s camera as some text, and the translation is done on the fly without a network connection. Currently, the app can only translate from Spanish to English (or vice versa), but Quest Visual is promising that more language packs are on the way. The application is “free” to download, but each language pack must be purchased within the app for $4.99. We downloaded the app along with the Spanish to English pack and let it loose on our Spanish dictionary, and… we’re impressed. We also wish we had this application while taking high school Spanish. Seeing is believing, hit the jump to watch a short demo video the company put together.

[Via Reddit]

Read

Tags:
, , , , , ,
23 Comments

Related Articles

  • gorgalis

    that is absolutely amazing

  • http://www.facebook.com/marksthomas Mark Thomas

    Doesn’t work nowhere near as smooth as that, or at least didnt on my iphone 4. Misleading.

    • Anonymous

      give us a quick review.

    • Anonymous

      Just tried it. It works great with printed text that’s not moving and the key is to tap the pause button so it locks in place.

  • http://twitter.com/defufna Ivan Savu

    Could you guys at BGR post real life Video ? I mean some real tests not this commercial video. With some trickier examples.

  • sirpaul

    I tried it out (demo mode) with BIG text and it works great! You need size 72 font for it to work without constantly flashing (you’ll know what I mean if I try it). I was really hoping that it would have a real translation demo. spending $5 on most likely a novelty app to impress your friends with isn’t worth it. I won’t be going anywhere Spanish anytime soon.

    So, it may not be perfect, but if you are traveling the $5 is certainly worth it. The translation is pretty much the way they show it in the video – as long as you aren’t trying to translate 12pt font with your hand constantly moving it works surprisingly well!

  • Sefiroh

    not sure how effective this is but i must admit, it is a VERY nice app.

  • Anonymous

    You should have specified iPhone in the title, Andrew. I actually got kind of excited about this, But I’m an Android user.

    Unless this was some kind of subtle dig…? Nah. Been hanging around trolls too long. Seriously, though: title needs changing. This is only for the iPhone.

    • sirpaul

      Not for long though, I assume. An app like this will most likely get ported over – it’s pure genius!

      • Anonymous

        Since I didn’t feel like doing any in-depth research, I went to Wikipedia.

        The Android Market has 170,000 apps. The App Store has 300,000. There are not 130,000 apps. The quality of an app has fuck-all to do with whether it will be ported or not.

        There’s no reason to assume it’ll come down the Android pipe.

      • sirpaul

        If they want to make more money, then they will. I’m sure this isn’t a one-person-team that put up the app. We’ll just wait and see.

    • Anonymous

      i thought it was for all phones too.

  • Jeremiah

    Do none of you seriously not know that Google Goggles has been doing this for the better part of 2010 and completely for free??!

    I don’t know if Goggles is on iOS, but it sure works great on Android ;-)

    • Anonymous

      Yeah, but the extra steps make a bit of a difference. Using Goggles, you scan the text, then select the text, then select translate.

      This is taking an augmented reality approach to it. That’s just slick.

  • Anonymous

    This is like magic!

    • kwaping

      I came here to post almost the same thing. “Any sufficiently advanced technology…”

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_RSLM5AZ26XBJWFTXOHJWRH6YGI Kimberly

    So i’m guessing this can be used with the iPod Touch 4G ?

  • Anonymous

    its a cool app but they make you pay for the translations portion…the app comes installed with reversing words that you point your camera at which is weird, i dunno when i will find it useful to read backwards words…

  • actualuser

    the translation is stupid. Its definitely misleading!

  • Anonymous

    this needs to come on android!

  • Mgl323

    very nice app

  • palomosan

    That’s some bad translation, I’m Dominican and it should say “Salchichas a la Parilla” and Papitas Fritas a la Francesa.

    You’re making such a big deal about this, they need to get the right translation before releasing this commercials.

  • Anonymous

    Awesome! Finally an occasion where I would want my reality to be augmented.

blog comments powered by Disqus