Skip to content

Guest Thinkers — December 17, 2010

Word Lens: Real-Time Translation via Augmented Reality

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Real-time translation and augmented reality have been among 2010’s hottest topics. Now, one app is marrying the two. Word Lens is a real-time translation app that turns your iPhone into “the dictionary of the future,” using optical character recognition and augmented reality to translate text.

From street signs to t-shirt slogans, the app offers a useful, playful, albeit no doubt imperfect, educational tool and portable cross-cultural bridge.

The 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.

Maria Popova is the editor of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of miscellaneous interestingness. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Magazine, Design Observer and Huffington Post, and spends a shameful amount of time on Twitter.

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Related

Google just put real-time language translation in the palm of our hands

Interpreter, Google’s language translating tool, is coming to mobile and it’s poised to change our everyday conversations.

Pokémon GO: How Augmented Reality Improves Our Experience of “Real Life”

Could Pokémon GO be considered art? Journalist Virginia Heffernan believes the game bears the hallmarks of great art — exploration, movement (of the soul or the soles), and a call to instinct.

▸

4 min

—

with

Virginia Heffernan

Technology & Innovation

Pilot Earbud Translates Languages in Real-Time

Waverly Labs has developed a universal language translator that sits in your ear. It’s called the Pilot.

Future Tourists Travel with Personal Interpreters and Translating Shades

Smart phones will empower the tourists of the future, acting as their expert personal interpreters and translation shades that can instantly decipher text in foreign languages.

Zoybar: Open-Source Music Hardware Architecture

The open-source movement’s capacity for collaborative innovation on the content and productivity side is a well-established reality, with success stories like Wikipedia, WordPress and Firefox to show for. But open-source […]

Up Next

Higher Education Needs To Rethink Screening Applicants For Criminal Records

Last week, for almost forty five minutes, a genuine feeling of optimism overwhelmed me as I chatted with Marsha Weissman, the executive director of the Center for Community Alternatives, although […]