
Google Translate in Android: Point, tap, brush, listen - pajju
http://googletranslate.blogspot.in/2012/08/point-tap-brush-and-listen.html
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abcd_f
I've been using WorldLens [0] for several weeks and while it has an inferior
UI and its translation engine is outright dumb, it works _offline_ and it's a
HUGE plus. One needs this sort of app when traveling in another country, so
the chances of having WiFi/3G connection are pretty slim, so no Google
translation for you.

That's not to say that's Google's take is wrong, it's just (far) less
practical right now.

[0] <http://questvisual.com>

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andybak
"One needs this sort of app when traveling in another country, so the chances
of having WiFi/3G connection are pretty slim"

THIS is what needs fixing. In Asia, it's often cost-effective to get a Sim on
the spot (I got one in Kuala Lumpur just for a two-day stay). Usually though
it's not worth getting a local Sim unless you're there for at least 4 or 5
days and that's assuming they don't insist on residency like they sometimes
do.

I'm from the UK and in many European countries I can just use my own Sim
without it being completely prohibitively expensive (although it's still a
complete rip-off).

But we need decently, priced roaming data or quick-to-buy local SIM cards in
every country so that all those maps, translators, local guides and other
marvellous aids to travelling can actually get used.

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zalew
funny they gave cyrilic as an example. I've recently been on Ukraine and
wanted to test it out for fun. scanned part of a menu (capital letters) while
in a restaurant with wifi and the result was something like
"3KOUIJL3KLJLKOOOASA3IIU". even though Ukrainian!=Russian, with such scan
results you can't even attempt to translate it.

btw out of curiosity I've tested a few google mobile apps while traveling. my
experience:

translate - needs internet and failed reading cyrilic.

google maps - offline caching didn't work at all, I didn't know how to get to
my cached maps as when I start maps it raises a message that I need internet
connection and didn't let me go further.

google drive - I pressed 'offline' and wanted to create a document and it says
I need internet connection. lol.

~~~
jgfoot
You need to tell it that the source language is Russian; if you tell it the
source language is English, it will try to recognize Cyrillic characters as
Roman, which doesn't work. Also, it looks like the scan option is not
available for Ukrainian at all. But for something like a restaurant menu,
you're probably fine telling it the language is Russian--there is a high
degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages.

~~~
zalew
> there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages.

I know, and I can read cyrilic.

> You need to tell it that the source language

well, if it wasn't a bug, now I guess I faced a usability issue (using
translate online it usually auto-detects the lang so I'm not used to choosing
it), that's probable, and one friend of mine also told me he got gibberish
from scanning cyrilic.

still one case stands: the need of a working data connection when you are
travelling abroad is an obstacle.

~~~
option_greek
The difference between auto guessing it online and during scanning is that it
has to do one more round of guessing during OCR which is why it is more error
prone.

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bahularora
Microsoft’s app Translator is really good. You can even download language
packs so that it works offline.

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s_henry_paulson
It's a basic feature, and perhaps it's not perfect, but for those that use
this app quite a bit, this is a huge help.

Worst case, it doesn't recognize the text, and you type it in, same as you had
been doing this whole time.

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smlacy
Blog post from Aug 9, 2012, so "old news".

Something that's new to you is old news to people following the space.

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shadyabhi
For now, it supports only few languages. That's sad.

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rjzzleep
i've been wondering what the photos in recaptcha were doing for a while. I
guess we now have our answer. congrats i guess?

~~~
molmalo
Recaptcha does not work for this, because it needs to give a fast response to
the user. Recaptcha is useful for batch processes and to generate data that
refines their statistical models, but not for real-time OCR.

~~~
ge0rg
The photos in recaptcha are mostly street names and numbers from Google
StreetView. Very elegant combination of two ambitious projects.

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mtgx
I wish they just bought Word Lens or did something similar. Using the 3G
connection is the last thing you want to do when you're travelling.

~~~
s_henry_paulson
Word lens and google translate are incompatible.

The only real feature aside from basic OCR that Word Lens offers is that they
make the "translation" appear in the same area where the original words were.

This only works because they only translate words, they don't translate what
is actually being said.

If word lens were to attempt to do any actual translation, the amount of text
would be greatly different, and the gimmickyness of their product would
vanish.

Google translate wants to actually translate one thing from another. Word lens
wants to translate individual words to help you get a basic idea of what
something might say, which preserving it's futuristic gimmick.

~~~
mtgx
I think Google could do something similar to what they did to Voice
recognition in Jelly Bean. They managed to make 80% of their voice engine work
offline. If they can do that with voice, I think they can do that with their
dictionaries.

~~~
eurleif
>If they can do that with voice, I think they can do that with their
dictionaries.

This feature uploads images to Google to do the OCR. That's the biggest
problem here.

