“A new iPhone app known as Word Lens will translate Spanish or English phrases instantly on the screen when you point your device’s camera lens at the foreign language words,” Chloe Albanesius reports for PC Magazine. “Not sure what the menu in that Madrid sidewalk cafe is offering? Point your iPhone’s camera at the menu and it will translate right in front of you.”
“The futuristic app made its debut in the App Store Thursday, and is currently the number nine app in Apple’s top 10 free apps,” Albanesius reports. “Word Lens, from San Francisco-based Quest Visual, is free to download and includes two free features – reverse words and erase words. The Spanish to English function or English to Spanish feature, however, currently cost $4.99 each to download as part of a 50 percent off sale that ends December 31.”
Albanesius reports, “Quest Visual said the feature works without an Internet connection… Word Lens works with the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, or iPod touch with a video camera. Other languages are in the works, the company said.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Pretend iPhone sufferers can sit and spin.
Now that’s freaking COOL!
and it’s an iphone app FIRST…gotta love it
VERY impressive.
After Shazam, this is the coolest useful App I have ever seen. Where can we take this next!! Wow!
This is sweet – way to innovate!
I can’t believe that it can do the reverses like that, such as placing white letters on a red. The translation part is only a portion of what makes that a kick-ass app.
Very cool, but I am confused. There is a free app but you have to pay for translations. What does the free app do?
Notice they pick phrases that could be translated accurately. Yet, we all know that AI (Artificial Intelligence) is not here. So, as neat as this scanning-the-words-rather-than-typing-them-in-Google-Translate feature is, the app won’t be able to provide fully-accurate translations, just like Google Translate at google.com cannot. I personally don’t care if translations are not fully accurate, as long as I get the gist of what is being translated. That being said, the technology behind this app is profound and it remains to be seen what else it can be applied to. Congratulations Quest Visual on this app and keep up the good work.
@David
The app reverses erases the letters of all words on the viewfinder as a demo of the technology. The english-spanish and spanish-english dictionaries are in-app purchases, with more languages coming soon.
Imagine what someone would have said if you told them 5 years ago that a phone would be able to do OCR?
It’s a very impressive app. Reminds me of Arthur Clarke’s 3rd law…
@David,
The developers are describing the free functions (word reversal and word erasing) as a “proof of concept” to entice you to buy language translation packs.
@Saldin,
“Reminds me of Arthur Clarke’s 3rd law…”
So very true.
@Cubert,
“Imagine what someone would have said if you told them 5 years ago that a phone would be able to do OCR?”
I would’ve smugly laughed and told them that by that time the iPhone would be able to do augmented reality OCR, because in a few years I expect my iPhone will enable me to time travel, so my 5 years ago self will know everything about the future.
Does anyone still remember that Future Vision video from Microsoft? How about the section with a ‘virtual’ classroom? Well, that’s just pathetically hilarious compared to this.
Don’t waste your money like I did. I paid $4.99 for Spanish to English and it gets a word right about 1 out of ten times in the real world and if there are words & texts of different sizes together, it doesn’t work at all. I feel ripped off.
Okay, that video is, as my son would say, “sick!” I’ve looked at augmented reality apps in the App Store, and they all promise a lot, but when you read the reviews, the vast majority of users say it doesn’t work as advertised. It will be really interesting to see if this sucker actually does what it says.
I’ve spent the money, and while it clearly struggles with large blocks of words, I’m still impressed as heck.
Think about it: a mobile ARM processor has to drive a camera, decipher letters and perform translation in real-time. No wonder it struggles.
Even if I never use it, I’m glad to spend the money to encourage development of apps like this. Go forth and multiply.
Why can’t it be a backscatter machine and see thru the cardboard sign the girl is holding up and her clothes?
Does anyone know if it has been released or when it will be released? Please tell me.
@spencer
It was released yesterday.
Did you read the article?
If only Douglas Adams was alive to see this.
I bought this and was totally blown away. And everyone I’ve shown it to has their jaw sink right to the floor. It’s purpose is to translate things like signs & phrases, not whole paragraphs or pages, so it’s accuracy is certainly good enough for that. So far I haven’t noticed any errors that makes me want to complain.
Chances are that English speakers who can’t speak at least one other language can hardly read English in the first place, so spelling out the translation wouldn’t help as much as ‘speaking’ it would. How about something more useful, like incorrectly spelled English to correctly spelled English, or Yiddish <—> Arabic? Or Legal Fine Print <—> common English?
Still, at least it’s a pin-light at the end of the long tunnel leading to a Universal Translator. Or a Double-Speak Interpreter©. Or even a… uh, never mind.
No more excuses for asking lovely Spanish waiters to help you out with the menu.
Even though the app itself is free, it serves no purpose before you make an in-app purchase of a language.
So you need to come up with the money without having any idea how good the translations are.
A minimimal set of languages should be available, even if that entails having to endure ads or bumping into a limit of fewer than, say, 50 translated words to start out and maybe 10 extra/day.
Alternatively, have the consumer pay per translated word.