Futuristic iPhone App Translates Text, Blows Minds

[Aedes]

Well... that looks cool.

Now make a translation from Japanese/Chinese to English or Portuguese and I might get interested.

 

[Dana22]

Nice bit of tech The implications in this are massive!

But Optical Text Recognition is nothing new really.

 

[Lillowh]

Limitations aside, this technology exists. It can only get better from here as kinks get ironed out. Now where are my road-legal flying cars?

Here's your road legal flying car. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7826330.stm]

Pfft. That one is lame and childs play. Here's your actual road legal flying car! [http://www.terrafugia.com/]

 

[logiman]

well..freetraslations.com can do the translation and ABBY can scan and make text editable..it`s all in keeping it on the sign..but i bet there was an app of some sort for that already, so it`s just a thing of mixing all the 3 together to work..i`ll be impressed when it will be able to do that to a page from my text book instantly

 

[Warforger]

Now where are my road-legal flying cars?

What do you mean? Flying cars don't need to be road legal! They don't use roads, they fly above them

OT: This, is awesome. This generations ever-going quest to imitate star-trek is getting slowly more realised.

Yah but you still need clearance from the places you fly over to fly over them.

 

[saruman31]

This is the only thing that ever got my attention from Apple.

 

[vrbtny]

Now where are my road-legal flying cars?

What do you mean? Flying cars don't need to be road legal! They don't use roads, they fly above them

OT: This, is awesome. This generations ever-going quest to imitate star-trek is getting slowly more realised.

Yah but you still need clearance from the places you fly over to fly over them.

Air-legal, then.

[small]killjoy[/small]

 

[Angus565]

Damn it! Why didn't I get an ipod with a camera when I had the chance?

Well, maybe I'll get an Iphone sometime.

 

[Digikid]

Not bad....but it would be better if it knew the language automatically instead of you having to select it.

 

[Cryo84R]

Holy crap thats amazing.

 

[mjc0961]

Eh, I'm actually not all that impressed. It's just a text recognition program, translator, and image/video editor all rolled up together. It's worth a "That's neat", but I'm not feeling the "Holy shit that's cool" on this one.

 

[BabyRaptor]

I wish they stop calling it iPhone apps, when my iPod Touch 4th gen can run almost every app the iPhone can. (and a better camera)

This. Call it something dumb sounding like iApps. But my iPod kicks the crap out of the iPhone. It shouldn't get ignored.

 

[dragontiers]

I've been waiting for a Universal Translator for years. We've had text-to-voice and voice-to-text programs (admittedly with pronunciation problems) and text language translators (admittedly with many grammar based bugs) for years. All we need is some enterprising (pun intended) programmer to combine the two, and voila! Universal Translator! This is just as cool in my book.

...but I still want my Universal Translator.

 

[tahrey]

Ladies and gents, this may well be an epiphany moment, or at least a joint one. I never had a good reason to consider the iphone before today... well, maybe the barcode-scanner thing that looks up how much things cost on amazon etc. But buying a whole, very expensive smartphone for a comparison shopping app that might break even on the investment over a year, that's a bit extravagant.

However that, and this, if it works realiably, holy crap. My "WTF is that" vacation troubles are effective ended. Particularly if I decide to jet off to japan or wherever. We are happily rushing towards a star trek future. Sign me up for the dark side.

Still, I bet someone will make a working offline Android one before too long

 

[antipunt]

Dude wow. OK, this thread ain't all talk!

 

[MasterSplinter]

I can't believe they released an advertising with the translator putting:
"Y lo va el otro dirección". (for those non-Spanish speaking of you, that doesn't have the slightest sense)

This app was clearly made and properly programed only for people that speak English or want to see the text in English. I'm cool with that, but it baffles me that they showed such a clear example of the app being unable to do anything else for every one to see, right there on the advertising.

THEY COULD HAVE FREAKING ASKED SOMEBODY IF THE DAMN THING WAS TRANSLATING WELL TO SPANISH BEFORE PUBLICLY BRAGGING ABOUT IT!

 

[manaman]

Once the "holy crap that is cool" factor wore off I realized all I was left with was a hyperactive and spastic literal translator that makes no attempt to translate context (see google and babble fish before it to see some that do).

 

[Fangface74]

Nice bit of tech The implications in this are massive!

But Optical Text Recognition is nothing new really.

True, but it's not about OCR, but interactivity with your surroundings bringing it into the hand held domain, this has many interesting possibilities, imagine downloading a restaurants app and holding your phone up to the menu and seeing various dishs being prepared, going to the movies, get the free app and have all movie posters run as trailers on your phone. (I know you can just visit Apple trailers or whatever but you get the idea, iPod Touch owners for example.)