Comments on: Word Lens: Augmented reality language translation app for iPhone

By: libelle

libelle — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This app is facing several of the hardest problems in CS: image/glyph extraction, OCR, and translation. An error in any of these processes results in substantially greater error as the processing progresses.

The fact that it works at all on a piece of hardware like an iPhone is amazing, and a promise of really cool shit yet to come!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

if the translations come out anything like these http://blahblahfish.com I’m happy. best app ever.

By: mathdemon

mathdemon — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

A novel idea that I bet these guys will make plenty of money on.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The whales not included. That’s what it got on your LOLcats thing. Kind of mysterious.

By: Eric R

Eric R — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The first thing I thought when I saw this app on Gizmodo was “Holy shit! This is just what the TARDIS does!”

Yes. The TARDIS is an augmented reality engine.

By: certron

certron — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I tried this out on the cover of Linux Journal #175 that I had on my desk at work and it didn’t do too poorly. I used the reverse text plugin supplied for free and it worked on pretty much the whole cover. It didn’t recognize some words like GPU (not a statistically likely combination?) or Cory Doctorow (it didn’t like the other red letters on the page, either), but otherwise it did a pretty good job. There were some strange results when pointing it at handwriting, especially parts that I had scratched out. :-) I am impressed with the recognition capability, but I would assume san serif typefaces on large signs would provide the best results. Entertaining at the very least.

By: Nelson.C

Nelson.C — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If it worked (however badly) on Japanese, I’d buy an iPhone tomorrow. Or a camera-equipped iPad next month.

By: otaviogood

otaviogood — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Dang! I don’t have any lolcats in my test image set that I used for development. That would explain teh fail. I’m one of the developers and I hate to say it, but I didn’t anticipate that use case. Sorry bout that.

-Otavio Good

By: Xeni Jardin

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Oh nice, Octavio! Good to hear from one of the devs.

You guys built something amazing. @libelle #9 nailed it, I’m shocked it works at all on the currently available devices. The promise is what matters, not the fact that one can’t use it in current state to wander around in Mexico and translate every printed word with perfect accuracy, on the fly.

I didn’t mean to sound unappreciative of the awesomeness. :)

By: Lex10

Lex10 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It’s da few cha

By: capl

capl — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So Wittgenstein meets his friend on a train to Vienna exclaiming that he has finally converted language into a mathematical process, solving all translation issues and settling numerous historically troublesome debates simultaneously.
His friend shows him an image of the ORLY Owl and says, “What’s the mathematical symbol for that?”
Ach Ja… sighed Wittgenstein and went back to the drawing board.

By: Church

Church — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

TRANSLATION SERIOUS BUSINESS!

By: Xeni Jardin

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

CEILING CAT IS WATCHING YOU TRANSLATE

By: solitaire

solitaire — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

TECHO GATO ES VIENDO TÃš TRADUCIR

By: mellowknees

mellowknees — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

As a bilingual person, I have to say that most automated translators suck. However, that being said, they can also be immensely helpful. Many times you can get the gist, which is better than not knowing what the text means at all.

Also, often the results are quite hilarious.

I concur about magic needing time to evolve. Google Translate, which I do use sometimes to help me when translating documents (and then I go through it and correct its sometimes atrocious grammar) is light years beyond old Babelfish, for example. And Babelfish was light years beyond the old DOS-based translation program my boss bought to make it “easy” for us to translate documents. I can imagine that in a few years, automated translation will be even better…but it will probably never be perfect. Language is a continually evolving thing, after all!

By: hbl

hbl — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“Like everything important, I tested it out on LOLcats.” – LOL, everything sounds stupid when you say it like that. :D

By: Nadreck

Nadreck — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Sort of like a talking dog. It’s not that it talks poorly that’s of note; just that it talks at all. That said, I don’t see how it’s going to handle more than a few fonts in a couple of orientations on anything but plain one-colour backgrounds. On the other hand, people might start actually making legible signs so that they can be read by apps like this (people never move on ergonomic problems until they inconvenience a machine) and that would be a good thing.

By: hpavc

hpavc — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Well its not obfuscating the context you have it right there in front of you, so compared to a ‘static’ translation (such as book) its much better.

In addition the verbiage are all anchors and can be looked up for their meanings.

By: huebner5000

huebner5000 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

After noticing the app finding words to translate in the texture of my cubicle wall, I wondered what it would do if fed a rich continuous stream of noise. So I turned it on the iTunes visualizer with great results. It finds patterns in the noise & follows them around the screen as the change orientation until they disappear. More details here and here.

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So two German professors, having newly learned English, arrive at JFK International Airport in New York. Proud of their newfound ability to speak to the natives, they immediately head for the airport bar, where the bartender asks them what they’d like.

“We,” one enunciates carefully, “would like two martinis.”

The bartender nods and moves off to his drinks. Then he turns and says, “Dry?”

The frustrated German shouts, “Nein! Nein, nur zwei!”

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is highly nifty.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So it mistook “what is” for “whales”. I’m sure it is geared more for concrete nouns anyways. Kind of a harsh review.