Word Lens has got to be the most awesome travel app!

Forget about Google Translate. Step away, iTranslate. And goodbye to all those other translation apps. Welcome to Word Lens.


Word Lens, developed by Visual Quest, is an augmented reality translation application which uses the camera on your smartphone to scan and identify foreign text and then translate it into in another language. But wait, it isn't a case of either (a) snapping a picture on your camera and getting it translated, or (b) requiring a data connection. Instead, words are displayed in the original context on the original background, and the translation is performed in real-time without connection to the internet. Here's a video that you must watch, to know what I'm talking about!


Currently, this app translates to English from: Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese and Russian, and back from English to those languages. So while it likely won't work in the Middle East (they also have English signs there, thank goodness), I find this to be a wide enough range to take care of travel to a large number of countries! The app is available on the iStore (for Apple devices) and a version for Android devices is available on Google Play. And you can get it for Google Glass too!

To be clear, this is definitely not a sponsored post. I simply love the idea behind this app, and the fact that it works without a data connection is a big plus, in my opinion. I have a couple of business trips coming up over the next 2-3 weeks, and I'm keen to try this out.


Comments

  1. flyfromscratchJune 10, 2014 at 8:28 AM

    This is too cool.. will surely try it.. I wish I knew about it before my recent trip to mexico..

    ReplyDelete

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