Word Lens Wows As Instant iPhone Translator

Wow is an understatement when you first see QustVisual’s Word Lens app for the iPhone. The combined efforts of Otavio Good and John DeWeese really appears magical. The program recognizes text, looks it up in a dictionary, translates it and redraws it on the screen with optical character recognition and augmented reality technology. Everything is done in the phone and does not require a signal to operate.

The idea came when working for Sega and traveling in a foreign country. Good was unfamiliar with the language but he was familiar with his handheld devices. He imagined being able to hold his phone up to a sign to translate it and now, 2 ½ years later his idea is a reality. It doesn’t stop there. On top of adding more languages Good hopes to develop a reader for the blind as well. I can see it being developed into a quick tool for distributors to translate foreign films for sale in the States.

As impressive as it is, Word Lens is still a baby product. It’s limited to translating the dictionaries you’ve downloaded. Right now they are priced $4.99 per dictionary and the only ones available are Spanish to English and English to Spanish. The Company is planning on adding more libraries right away. Good says, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we did French next, Italian and since my mom is Brazilian, Portuguese.”

At this time it is not intended for large amounts of text translation. You wouldn’t try to read a book with it. As Good puts it, “The translation isn’t perfect, but it gets the point across.” The program is also limited to recognizing printed text, it has trouble translating handwriting. It will still knock your socks off to see it in action.

Like QuestVisual’s company slogan says, Bienvenido al Futuro/ Welcome to the Future.

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By Heather Fairchild - Heather is a writer and blogger for Nexxt. She researches and writes about job search tactics, training, and topics.