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Introducing Word Lens

questvisual.com

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Re: Introducing Word Lens

#141

Post by darren_ »

DanielN wrote: post #56
johndeweese wrote: post #14

(hola, i'm john deweese, one of the creators) good to hear the early positive response, and we look forward to your insightful feedback (support@questvisual.com) -- mention this site so we pay some extra attention. i hope this app will be nice and disruptive, and we'll be looking carefully at what people expect and how they actually use it. it's a platform, and we're really excited about the directions it opens up. t…

Have you guy's explored at all how difficult mandarin translations will be? If it is possible this would be a huge market for you.

Depending on how their OCR works, Mandarin/Japanese->English(/spanish/&c) could be a _lot_ more difficult (thousands of characters to distinguish) and in the case of Japanese the translation a lot trickier (completely different grammar, Mandarin's not so bad though).

This could just be a case of needing to optimize and train their recognizer to deal with a much larger set of possible characters, or it could require implementing kanji-specific OCR techniques like attempting to decompose the characters into their constituent strokes, and recognize based on classification of those strokes (orientation, position, direction).

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#142

Post by muon »

They could have stopped at just translating and printing it on the screen, but they show it the original form, that is the difference between doing things and doing the things beautifully.

I am spellbound.

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#143

Post by m0nastic »

That was the fastest $10 I've ever spent in the App Store. I'll echo most people's sentiments, this is seriously cool (although I must look like an idiot walking around my apartment pointing my phone at everything).

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#144

Post by ebaysucks »

muon wrote: post #142

They could have stopped at just translating and printing it on the screen, but they show it the original form, that is the difference between doing things and doing the things beautifully. I am spellbound.

I agree - showing the original form is a big part of the WOW factor.

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#145

Post by dholowiski »

I showed this app to my 60 year old semi-technophobic parents and they immediately understood it. They are ready to buy an iPod touch to use with this app for their next cruise. My mom guessed the cost of a language at $50 and was shocked to hear the actual price.

Screw zuckerberg, The developers of this app should be on the cover of time magazine.

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#147

Post by ghshephard »

Cute undocumented (that i could find) Easter egg on the Reverse Words feature - It also 'corrects' the spelling. heh. (Discovered when it insisted the reverse of "Shephard" was drehpehS)

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#148

Post by darren_ »

johndeweese wrote: post #14

(hola, i'm john deweese, one of the creators) good to hear the early positive response, and we look forward to your insightful feedback (support@questvisual.com) -- mention this site so we pay some extra attention. i hope this app will be nice and disruptive, and we'll be looking carefully at what people expect and how they actually use it. it's a platform, and we're really excited about the directions it opens up. t…

As a language learner I'd love the ability to capture and export (in some fashion) the pre-translated text, as text not an image, to import into SRS learning software. This especially applies to the Japanese/Mandarin support that I hope you guys are working on.

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#149

Post by DanielN »

darren_ wrote: post #141
DanielN wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you guy's explored at all how difficult mandarin translations will be? If it is possible this would be a huge market for you.

Depending on how their OCR works, Mandarin/Japanese->English(/spanish/&c) could be a _lot_ more difficult (thousands of characters to distinguish) and in the case of Japanese the translation a lot trickier (completely different grammar, Mandarin's not so bad though). This could just be a case of needing to optimize and train their recognizer to deal with a much larger set of possible characters, or it could require i…

This is what I was thinking. I don't know about Japanese, but sentence structure in mandarin is pretty much reversed from what it is in romance languages. And so much of character meaning is based on context that outside of common phrases it might be nearly impossible.

On the other hand, an English to Chinese translator might be more doable, and might also be more commercially profitable.

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#150

Post by bobf »

ebaysucks wrote: post #140

Why the name Word Lens? I had to come back to this thread to remember the name after talking to my brother about it. I think "Babylon App" would be a perfect name for this app. Just my 2 cents.

Babylon is already the name of a translation software company (for >13 years, see babylon.com).
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