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Introducing Word Lens

questvisual.com

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Re: Introducing Word Lens

#281

Post by eml »

ugh wrote: post #34
ianferrel wrote: post #28

I downloaded it immediately. Making it free to try and selling the dictionaries is a great sales model. The demo mode does a mirror-image reversal of the word to show you that it can detect words. I was using a 4th gen iPod Touch, so lower-res camera and no flash. Unfortunately, I was not able to get it to work as well as I'd hoped. I tested physical copies of a few things: 1. Mac OS X Snow Leopard cd case. Black san…

The current iPod touch has only a very low res, low quality camera (I think VGA or maybe a bit better, in any case less than 1 MP) without even autofocus. It would be nice if someone could try it with an iPhone to see if it fares better.

Right. Wikipedia says: 0.7MP fixed-focus camera with HD video capture (720p at 30fps) with 960 x 720 resolution still images

I believe the iPhone 3GS/4's autofocus makes a huge difference in clarity for close-ups.

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#282

Post by abrahamsen »

memetichazard wrote: post #232
gus_massa wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that Google Translate is not word-to-word, but it is not perfect. For example, a few years ago, some students of my wife give to her a homework about clocks and gears. When she read it, she was annoyed because the redaction was incredible horrible. But later we realized that the students didn't write it, the "homework" was a web page translated with Google Translate. Another time, I need an example of the diff…

Google Translate is definitely far from perfect. I once saw this forum post that was in German, that Google translated "A: Nyet." to "A: Yes." Since it was a question and answer post regarding information for an upcoming game, there was quite of bit of fuss over it before this translation error was discovered.

It surprised me so much I took a screenshoot of it:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5815494/GW-Deutch.jpg

I cannot understand what heuristic would translate the complete German sentence "Nein." into "Yes.".

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#283

Post by avree »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #112
acangiano wrote: post #2

Whoever created this deserves the boatload of money they are going to make. It has the potential of radically change the experience abroad for people traveling in foreign countries.

If this thing can be made to do Chinese or Japanese... even if it does so haltingly , with mistakes... Raise the price. For the love of god. Raise the price. This is much, much more valuable than five bucks. There have been times in life where I'd gladly have paid a dollar per minute for this. And I'm a cheapskate.

I actually know the guy who made this, and he has a very convincing Korean version of it working.

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#284

Post by Alan01252 »

revorad wrote: post #252
staunch wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I see the opposite. Anyone could have had this idea, but very few could execute on it. In fact all that will determine whether this is a big success or not is whether the thing really works or not (execution).

A lot of people must have thought of making OCR iPhone apps. But the idea of using OCR to do real-time language translation superposed on the original background image? That's genius. I hadn't thought of it. Did you? At least in my limited experience, deciding what to work on is really important. Acknowledging great ideas doesn't take away anything from their superb execution.

My work colleague also had this exact idea, and told me about it in the hopes I could code something to do the job. There was just no way I had the time/resources/skill to make something like this.

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#285

Post by omaranto »

StavrosK wrote: post #228
zzleeper wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "dead end" means "callejon sin salida". That's the correct translation (callejon = road, sin salida = w/out exit). On the other hand, "muerto fin" has NO meaning in spanish, (and that's what you get when you translate word for word without context).

"Muerto fin" means "an ending that has died", no?

No, that would be "fin muerto"; "muerto fin" is gibberish.

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#286

Post by omaranto »

narag wrote: post #184
ygd wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(2 years of classroom Spanish here.) I like how "Make right turn" becomes "Make correct turn".

It becomes "make correct shift" (as in "I work in the night shift"). The word in Spanish would be "giro". The natural translation would be "gira a la derecha".

"gira a la derecha" is correct but not idiomatic in every country; in Mexico we say "da vuelta a la derecha".

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#287

Post by omaranto »

solutionyogi wrote: post #37

Wow. Just Wow. I had to put the App to test. Printed some simple English words and tried it out. Original paper: http://imgur.com/EYsko What the App shows in REALTIME: http://imgur.com/FhaSW Comparison with Google Translate: http://imgur.com/GOd94.jpg [EDIT: Note, Translating Muerto Fin to English in Google Translate, does result in 'Dead End'. Can any Spanish reader clarify why the original Google Translate chose to…

"make right turn" is apparently hard! Word Lens translates it to "make correct turn" but where "turn" is in the sense of taking turns not in the sense of turning. Google Translate gives "to the right which in turn".

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#288

Post by omaranto »

narag wrote: post #184
ygd wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(2 years of classroom Spanish here.) I like how "Make right turn" becomes "Make correct turn".

It becomes "make correct shift" (as in "I work in the night shift"). The word in Spanish would be "giro". The natural translation would be "gira a la derecha".

"turno" can mean either "shift" as in "I work the night shift" or "turn" as in "it's my turn now" (but not the turning sort of "turn").

Re: Introducing Word Lens

#289

Post by samatman »

kilian wrote: post #208

This app is too cool, but it seems a little over eager. Here's me pointing the app at a mosaic: http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg612/scaled.php?tn=0&server=...

Overeager is good, since in the typical use case, you'll be pointing it at words.

The potential for amusing pareidolias is definitely there. Maybe a tumblr for 'found translations'?

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