Word Lens

Word Lens is a real-time translation app that turns your iPhone into “the dictionary of the future,” optical character recognition and augmented reality to translate text. he app is free in the iTunes Store, with various language pairs available for in-app purchase. The first pair released is Spanish-English, with more coming soon.

My head just exploded.

(via bigthink)

20 Comments leave a comment below

  1. That’s amazing!!

    Now we just need glasses that feeds the camera to them and you can walk around the world and know what everything says!!!

    Richard
    Dec 17th, 2010 / 11:25 am

  2. awesome iPhoneApp, if this is really working 100%

    Sebastian
    Dec 17th, 2010 / 11:29 am

  3. This is, simply put. ridiculous. It’s honestly another level of amazing. Word of it has been buzzing up my twitter stream all day, but, come on, this is so incredible, it isn’t even fair.

    Motheo Moleko
    Dec 17th, 2010 / 11:31 am

  4. too bad it requires internet access … which means global roaming charges … which means, no dice.

    Sara Lee
    Dec 17th, 2010 / 12:04 pm

  5. I work in the museum exhibit design field and I can imagine using this as a means to provide international visitors the possibility to read all our info on the fly without producing extraneous material.

    Genius!

    Emilio Genovese
    Dec 17th, 2010 / 12:07 pm

  6. i guess i need to buy an iphone now…

    rick
    Dec 17th, 2010 / 1:23 pm

  7. @Sebastian – I downloaded the app and paid the $4.99 for the English to Spanish translation. It works..

    @Sara Lee – See 0:29 of the video, no internet connection required.

    Heidi
    Dec 17th, 2010 / 1:45 pm

  8. My only beef is the translation in the screen capture is not correct at all, besides that the tech is awesome

    arturo elenes
    Dec 17th, 2010 / 2:49 pm

  9. Some of the Spanish phrases are a little stilted, but I’m gonna give it a try anyway. It’s still awesome.

    azabache
    Dec 17th, 2010 / 6:28 pm

  10. We kunnen wel inpakken met onze Rephrase vertaal applicaties. Er is nu Word Lens. Briljant!

    Bambi Cipullo
    Dec 18th, 2010 / 6:06 am

  11. My cabeza explotó!!

    It does not even need wifi. Works anywhere in the world.
    Truly magoc.

    Gisela Voss
    Dec 18th, 2010 / 12:12 pm

  12. My cabeza explotó!!

    It does not even need wifi. Works anywhere in the world.
    Truly magic. W-O-W!

    Gisela Voss
    Dec 18th, 2010 / 12:13 pm

  13. I strongly doubt it is “real-time” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing). Did you meant in-time ?

    Joe
    Dec 19th, 2010 / 10:35 am

  14. All the more reason to start a world tour now!

    Paul
    Dec 19th, 2010 / 11:45 pm

  15. Nice spanish syntax… :S

    WL is very helpful, but not a miracle.

    Jose H
    Dec 20th, 2010 / 11:51 am

  16. Awesome app here in Mexico we are simply loving it!

    TheRealMaiMai
    Dec 21st, 2010 / 1:25 pm

  17. PLEASE: make one that does English to French and vice versa!

    suzan mandla
    Dec 23rd, 2010 / 3:34 pm

  18. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
    from a rigged demo.” — Andy Finkel

    I’ve got to see this to believe it.

    jdudeck
    Dec 24th, 2010 / 2:55 am

  19. great application . Great video . Thanks

    danny95207
    Dec 24th, 2010 / 9:25 pm

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