Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2010 > December > 20 > Entry
‘Word Lens’: much buzz for a translation app
Over the weekend, techies were abuzz about a new app called “Word Lens” which can translate signage on the fly using the iPhone’s camera, a kind of augmented reality that has to be seen to be believed (and you can in the above video). Remarkably, it not only translates text, but does it in the same style as the sign, overlaying it right over the original text in the camera viewer.
While the reviews suggest it doesn’t exactly work as perfectly as the above video suggests, the fact that it works at all is pretty amazing and points the way to a near-future where this kind of translation technology will be standard on most phones and taken for granted.
The app is free to try, but language packs (currently only English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English, though other languages are on the way) cost $4.99 each. You can find it in the App Store here.
Have you tried it? What did you think? Let us know in the comments.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Phones
Comments
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By SkepticAll
December 24, 2010 10:31 AM | Link to this
Let's see I have to make up a gigantic board with near perfect block letters and the 'amazing' app will do word for word translation on some of the words. I think an average teenage iphone app hacker could knock that app out if he wanted to.
What I find more amazing is the sad dearth of fact checking or research in the US "news" media. Might as well use monkeys to compile the news.
By Travis Smith
December 21, 2010 9:35 PM | Link to this
I've used the Spanish-English translation pack for a few days. I've noticed that lighting makes a big difference. Outside during the day, the text is pretty rock solid. Indoors and at night, it fluctuates quite a bit. Still, there's no denying that this is the future. Amazing technology, indeed. Now, if it could just overlay subtitles when I point it at a Spanish speaker...
By Michael Croft
December 20, 2010 4:04 PM | Link to this
Hey, Omar,
I have the demo and the demo mode works well for me. I can see it being very useful if you speak a smattering of spanish (or any supported language) and are looking to get the gist of signs. It worked well on hand-printed signs around my office.
I think it's a word-for-word translation, which means it will make some pretty egregious translation errors, but as you say, it points the way to the future.
I'd be really interested in your take on it, especially on the translations.
By David J. Neff
December 20, 2010 3:26 PM | Link to this
Hey Omar,
I was really disappointed by it. We tried writing as clearly as we could, tried it on a computer screen, a TV monitor, etc and it still didn't work at all. Not even one word was translated.
What's the point if you have to print out big blocked letter (see the video) for it work. That's not a true real life situation. I'll re-download it when it can translate the taco menu for me at my fav taco truck.