Word Lens

Word Lens is an application that provides real time translations on your iOS device by using its camera.

Lost in translation?

Traveling to another country without speaking the language is nerve wracking. While Word Lens won’t teach you to speak a new language, it will enable you to read it at the very least. Word Lens uses your iOS device’s camera to detect text and automatically translate words and sentences on the fly.

Packs sold separately

While Word Lens is free, there are no language packs included. Instead, Word Lens lets users see how the application works by reversing or replacing words. While this is an impressive tech demo, it renders Word Lens useless without purchasing a language pack. Languages can be purchased within the app. As of this review, the  languages available are Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, and Portuguese.

There is a dictionary within the application to look up words that the app fails to translate properly or if you just want to find a word’s definition quickly, without using the camera. This is great feature but the definitions that it provided were a hit or miss.

Great for foreign trips

Word Lens is an impressive tech demo of what the program can actually do but it is a shame it doesn’t show you its translation prowess before deciding to purchase a language pack


 

Word Lens is an app similar to something to my design, unfortunately the app was the bought out by google in 2014, and was integrated into google translate.

I want to use this technology in my app by using smartphone cameras optical camera recognition software, i believe with the more recent releases of phones, cameras will be able to give better and more accurate translations. This will make the TransPal a mix of both an augmented reality app and a conventional app. I think for my app I will also take the idea of locking certain translations packs that can be purchased, but the main languages like EU languages will be free of charge to use. This way the app will generate money alongside revenue for minor ads.

 

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