Ever been confused at a restaurant in a foreign country and wish you could just scan your menu with your iPhone and get an instant translation? Well as of today you are one step closer thanks to Word Lens from QuestVisual.

The iPhone app, which hit iTunes last night,  is the culmination of 2 1/2 years of work from founders Otavio Good and John DeWeese. The paid app, which currently offers only English to Spanish and Spanish to English translation for $4.99, uses Optical Character Recognition technology to execute something which might as well be magic. This is what the future, literally, looks like.

Founder Good explains the app’s process simply, “It tries to find out what the letters are and then looks in the dictionary. Then it draws the words back on the screen in translation.” Right now the app is mostly word for word translation, useful if you’re looking to get the gist of something like a dish on a menu or what a road sign says.

At the moment the only existing services even remotely like this are Pleco, a Chinese learning app and a feature on Google Goggles where you can snap a stillshot and send that in for translation. Word Lens is currently self-funded.

Good says that the obvious steps for Word Lens’ future is to get more languages in. He’s planning on incorporating major European languages and is also thinking about other potential uses including a reader for the blind, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we did French next, Italian and since my mom is Brazilian, Portuguese.”

Says Good, modestly, “The translation isn’t perfect, but it gets the point across.” You can try it out for yourself here.

Remember Word Lens? That crazy, awesome mobile application that translated words inside of images, like road signs, posters, menus, and the like, from Spanish to English (and vice versa)? Well, now the app has added a third language to its repertoire: French. With the most recent app update, Word Lens can translate from English to French and back again, but not between French and Spanish.

A year ago, Word Lens was all the rage, after its long-awaited release – the result of two and half years’ worth of work from founders Otavio Good and John DeWeese. The app blew our collective minds. The thing was magic. Using OCR technology to “see” the words in front of the smartphone’s camera, Word Lens takes advantage of augmented reality to superimpose the translated words on top of the foreign text. All background images that aren’t text are removed, too. (See, augmented reality isn’t totally useless!). And even better, the app works offline thanks to its downloadable dictionaries.

The app itself is free, but each dictionary costs $4.99 correction: each dictionary is $9.99. (French-English and Spanish-English). Translations in Word Lens aren’t perfect, but then, few digital translators ever are. But it’s usually good enough to get the point across…and maybe save you from ordering the wrong item on the menu or finding your way around town.

You can grab the updated Word Lens from iTunes here.

Ever been confused at a restaurant in a foreign country and wish you could just scan your menu with your iPhone and get an instant translation? Well as of today you are one step closer thanks to Word Lens from QuestVisual.

The iPhone app, which hit iTunes last night, is the culmination of 2 1/2 years of work from founders Otavio Good and John DeWeese. The paid app, which currently offers only English to Spanish and Spanish to English translation for $4.99, uses Optical Character Recognition technology to execute something which might as well be magic. This is what the future, literally, looks like.

Founder Good explains the app’s process simply, “It tries to find out what the letters are and then looks in the dictionary. Then it draws the words back on the screen in translation.” Right now the app is mostly word for word translation, useful if you’re looking to get the gist of something like a dish on a menu or what a road sign says.

At the moment the only existing services even remotely like this are Pleco, a Chinese learning app and a feature on Google Goggles where you can snap a stillshot and send that in for translation. Word Lens is currently self-funded.

Good says that the obvious steps for Word Lens’ future is to get more languages in. He’s planning on incorporating major European languages and is also thinking about other potential uses including a reader for the blind, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we did French next, Italian and since my mom is Brazilian, Portuguese.”

Says Good, modestly, “The translation isn’t perfect, but it gets the point across.” You can try it out for yourself here.

Remember Word Lens? That crazy, awesome mobile application that translated words inside of images, like road signs, posters, menus, and the like, from Spanish to English (and vice versa)? Well, now the app has added a third language to its repertoire: French. With the most recent app update, Word Lens can translate from English to French and back again, but not between French and Spanish.

A year ago, Word Lens was all the rage, after its long-awaited release – the result of two and half years’ worth of work from founders Otavio Good and John DeWeese. The app blew our collective minds. The thing was magic. Using OCR technology to “see” the words in front of the smartphone’s camera, Word Lens takes advantage of augmented reality to superimpose the translated words on top of the foreign text. All background images that aren’t text are removed, too. (See, augmented reality isn’t totally useless!). And even better, the app works offline thanks to its downloadable dictionaries.

The app itself is free, but each dictionary costs $4.99 correction: each dictionary is $9.99. (French-English and Spanish-English). Translations in Word Lens aren’t perfect, but then, few digital translators ever are. But it’s usually good enough to get the point across…and maybe save you from ordering the wrong item on the menu or finding your way around town.

You can grab the updated Word Lens from iTunes here.

Word Lens wowed when it debuted back in 2010, with its tech that could translate the wording on signs captured with your smartphone’s camera automatically. Now, Quest Visual, the maker of that app, has been acquired by Google, the company announced today on its site.

With the acquisition, Google gets Quest Visual’s tech, which it will incorporate into Google Translate in the future, according to Quest Visual’s statement regarding the deal. And while the apps Quest Visual has created in the past likely won’t be supported once that transition is complete, the startup is making them available along with all language packs for free on Google Glass, Google Play and Apple’s App Store for a limited time.

Word Lens for Google Glass actually just got an update alongside a slew of new app introductions for the face-based computing platform. Chances are that Google is more interested in this tech for its broader applicability across its Google Translate platform than with regards to Google Glass specifically, however, as incorporating its features into all of its own mobile apps would likely make get it a lot of additional use.

Google confirmed the deal in an email to TechCrunch, and a spokesperson explained that Quest Visual’s talent and tech both displayed a strength that led Google to deem them a good fit for its Translate team.

Google is launching an update to its Translate apps for iOS and Android today.

There are three main parts to today’s announcement: offline support for iOS, Tap To Translate on Android, and Word Lens support for Chinese across platforms.

With this new version, the Translate team is bringing offline support to iOS. This feature, which comes in pretty handy when you are traveling and don’t know if you will have a reliable connection, was already available on Android. As Google notes, the team worked on making the language package downloads significantly smaller than before (up to 90 percent) and they should now weigh in at about 25 MB. These packages are now available in 52 languages.

For Android users, the most important new feature is Tap to Translate. Instead of having to copy and paste text from apps into Translate, you now only have to copy the text and the option to translate will appear (and the translation then shows up as an overlay without having to switch between different apps).

If Tap to Translate sounds familiar, it’s probably because Google already launched an earlier version of this feature last year. At the time, though, it only worked with a few select apps like WhatsApp and TripAdvisor.

In addition, Word Lens — the Translate feature that allows you to translate text in real time from a live feed from your camera — now also supports both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. With this, Word Lens now supports 29 languages.

As a Google spokesperson told me, many of these new features were inspired by what the company learned in countries like India and Indonesia, where many users are only now getting their first smartphones.

Ever been confused at a restaurant in a foreign country and wish you could just scan your menu with your iPhone and get an instant translation? Well as of today you are one step closer thanks to Word Lens from QuestVisual.

The iPhone app, which hit iTunes last night,  is the culmination of 2 1/2 years of work from founders Otavio Good and John DeWeese. The paid app, which currently offers only English to Spanish and Spanish to English translation for $4.99, uses Optical Character Recognition technology to execute something which might as well be magic. This is what the future, literally, looks like.

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Remember Word Lens? That crazy, awesome mobile application that translated words inside of images, like road signs, posters, menus, and the like, from Spanish to English (and vice versa)? Well, now the app has added a third language to its repertoire: French. With the most recent app update, Word Lens can translate from English to French and back again, but not between French and Spanish.

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Word Lens wowed when it debuted back in 2010, with its tech that could translate the wording on signs captured with your smartphone’s camera automatically. Now, Quest Visual, the maker of that app, has been acquired by Google, the company announced today on its site. With the acquisition, Google gets Quest Visual’s tech, which it […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google is launching an update to its Translate apps for iOS and Android today. There are three main parts to today’s announcement: offline support for iOS, Tap To Translate on Android, and Word Lens support for Chinese across platforms. With this new version, the Translate team is bringing offline support to iOS. This feature, which […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.