See post below for more about the app.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Word Lens iPhone App
I've just discovered what could possibly be the greatest smartphone app of all time. It's called World Lens, and among what it does is translate text from one language to another in real time (it also does frivolous things like invert English words).
It's currently available in French-to-English, Spanish-to-English, and vice versa for both.
For example, this is a paragraph in Spanish in the University of Chicago Spanish Dictionary.
Word Lens uses the iPhone's camera to detect text and translate it in real time.
This text is translated in real time as...
You can stop the real time algorithm and it will give you a "final draft" of the translation
If you click on a translated word, such as "LENGUA"...
It will give you a screen with alternative meanings of the translated word, and other words the original word might have been, in cases where the algorithm fails to properly read a word...
Pretty cool, huh?
It's made by Word Visual. It's sold as a travel aid, but could be used for so much more.
**For Linguists and/or Programmers**
Word Lens ostensibly uses only very limited top-down processing, if at all. Both its word recognition and translation capabilities could greatly improve the accuracy of the translation if top-down information were used. For example, top-down processing would have selected "language" instead of "tongue" as the translation for "lengua" (see pics above).
So... Does anyone want to make a better, rival app and try and sell it?
Comments and Emails welcome.
daylen (dot) riggs (at) gmail.com
It's currently available in French-to-English, Spanish-to-English, and vice versa for both.
For example, this is a paragraph in Spanish in the University of Chicago Spanish Dictionary.
Word Lens uses the iPhone's camera to detect text and translate it in real time.
This text is translated in real time as...
You can stop the real time algorithm and it will give you a "final draft" of the translation
If you click on a translated word, such as "LENGUA"...
It will give you a screen with alternative meanings of the translated word, and other words the original word might have been, in cases where the algorithm fails to properly read a word...
Pretty cool, huh?
It's made by Word Visual. It's sold as a travel aid, but could be used for so much more.
**For Linguists and/or Programmers**
Word Lens ostensibly uses only very limited top-down processing, if at all. Both its word recognition and translation capabilities could greatly improve the accuracy of the translation if top-down information were used. For example, top-down processing would have selected "language" instead of "tongue" as the translation for "lengua" (see pics above).
So... Does anyone want to make a better, rival app and try and sell it?
Comments and Emails welcome.
daylen (dot) riggs (at) gmail.com
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