
Introducing Word Lens - jf
http://questvisual.com/
======
solutionyogi
Wow. Just Wow.

I had to put the App to test.

Printed some simple English words and tried it out.

Original paper:

<http://imgur.com/EYsko>

What the App shows in REALTIME:

<http://imgur.com/FhaSW>

Comparison with Google Translate:

<http://imgur.com/GOd94.jpg>

[EDIT: Note, Translating Muerto Fin to English in Google Translate, does
result in 'Dead End'. Can any Spanish reader clarify why the original Google
Translate chose to translate 'DEAD END' to 'callejón sin sali'.]

[EDIT: So let me get this straight. Their program, running on iPhone [256MB
RAM, 600 MHz ARM CPU], can take a live image, perform OCR, translate, create
another image with the translated words. And all of this happens real time?
Wow.]

I think it's really hard to get a 'Wow' reaction from HN crowd. And you have
hit a home run! As someone else said in this thread, you are going to make
boatload of money. Congrats!

~~~
gus_massa
(Native Spanish speaker here.)

First: This app is amazing!

But I think that this app is doing almost a word by word translations, without
a list of usual expressions or grammatical analysis.

For example, the correct translation of _'Dead End'_ is _'callejón sin
salida'_ , that means literally something like _'street without exit'_.
Translating word by word _'Dead End'_ you obtain _'Muerto Fin'_ that is
unintelligible.

Another example from the video is the translation of

    
    
      'Lengua boliviana con una salsa picante de anchoas'.
    

The app translates this as

    
    
      'Tongue Bolivian with a sauce spicy of anchovies',
    

But the correct translations is something like

    
    
      'Bolivian Tongue with a spicy sauce of anchovies',
    

because in a translation between English and Spanish you must reverse the
order of the adjectives and nouns.

~~~
johndeweese
yep, this is a word-for-word translation, because it's fast and it gets the
point across. we're working to improve translation quality and finesse, but
it's a much harder problem to understand grammar. so, we hope it gives the
general meaning, and you can learn to piece it apart.

~~~
gus_massa
I think that most of the time a word-for-word translation is enough. I use
Google translator a lot, and most of the time the translation is not perfect
but it is good enough. So I think that is app is very useful.

But I think that the real problem are the idioms and phrases, like "dead end",
that have a completely different translation.

On the other hand, I think that you have more processing time that 1/10 sec.
Most of the time the user will point the app to the same text for 10 or 15
seconds. I think that it is possible to show first a very fast translation
almost instantly and a few seconds later show an improved version.

~~~
deno
Google Translate is not word-to-word though.

~~~
gus_massa
I know that Google Translate is not word-to-word, but it is not perfect.

For example, a few years ago, some students of my wife give to her a homework
about clocks and gears. When she read it, she was annoyed because the
redaction was incredible horrible. But later we realized that the students
didn't write it, the "homework" was a web page translated with Google
Translate.

Another time, I need an example of the differences between JPEG and JPEG2K for
a internal talk. I found a photograph with a zoom of Lena's eye with a legend
like "JPEG2K 1% vs JPG 1%", but the webpage was in Japanese, and I can’t reed
it. So I use Google Translate to be sure that it was a comparation of the two
methods with the same compression level.

So Google Translate is very good to get an idea of what some web page means,
but it is not good enough to make a final version of the translation.

This app have some additional difficulties that GT doesn't need to solve: they
need to OCR the text in the wild, they have less computational power and they
have to do it in real time. It is almost incredible that they can solve these
things. With a word to word translation, I think that you can get a good
enough translation 90%, 95% or even 99% of the times, but the corner cases can
be really unintelligible. The translation of "Tongue Bolivian ..." is fine,
and the user can understand what it means, so it is useful. The translation of
"Dead End" is something that they should improve in next version.

~~~
memetichazard
Google Translate is definitely far from perfect.

I once saw this forum post that was in German, that Google translated "A:
Nyet." to "A: Yes."

Since it was a question and answer post regarding information for an upcoming
game, there was quite of bit of fuss over it before this translation error was
discovered.

~~~
abrahamsen
It surprised me so much I took a screenshoot of it:

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5815494/GW-Deutch.jpg>

I cannot understand what heuristic would translate the complete German
sentence "Nein." into "Yes.".

------
johndeweese
(hola, i'm john deweese, one of the creators) good to hear the early positive
response, and we look forward to your insightful feedback
(support@questvisual.com) -- mention this site so we pay some extra attention.

i hope this app will be nice and disruptive, and we'll be looking carefully at
what people expect and how they actually use it. it's a platform, and we're
really excited about the directions it opens up.

thanks for the link, cheers!

~~~
kmfrk
You should register wordlensapp.com or something of the like. I'm not sure
hosting nothing but the app promotion on a site with a completely different
URL is beneficial.

With such a product, you should perhaps brand yourself more on your product
than your company name. :)

Just throwing it out there.

~~~
staunch
For future reference: never mention registering a domain in a public forum.
Some douchebag will always register it and try to sell it to you.

In this case someone has already registered wordlensapp.com. We can only hope
it's the Quest Visual people.

~~~
kmfrk
I thought better of HN. Shame.

There are many trends for using domains similar to what you would desire:
get<product> being the best, and <product>app being one of the other choices.

I have very bad experiences with finding an app's site, if it models
<product>app. Maybe it's just bad SEO on their part, but I imagine that it'd
be an awful hassle for any normal user who don't know the conventions.

Then it struck me that <use>product would be a very interesting domain that
makes much more sense than <product>app. It also mirrors the imperative <get>,
although it may not be as popular and known to users - yet.

I think it's a shame they didn't secure a regular <product>.com domain for
such a great product - but, on the other hand, I'm sure all the press will
forgive them (hell, they're trending on Twitter, and 80% of my social media
digest today was about the bloody thing).

I've registered usewordlens.com, usewordlens.net, and usewordlens.org and will
be happy to hand it over or point it to a domain of their choice (if someone
tells me how the hell to do it using name.com, because I'm a complete idiot in
that regard. I guess I have to mess with some DNS).

------
stevelosh
Wow.

I downloaded the app, bought the Spanish -> English pack, and tried it with
some simple phrases in a big TextEdit window on my monitor. It flickered a
bit, but I expected that from a monitor. It got them right.

Big deal, common phrases are easy -- I could just buy a phrasebook. Then I
tried a random phrase from the Spanish version of "Dive into Python":

    
    
        Una función, como cualquier otra cosa en Python, es un objeto.
    

It flickered like before from the monitor, but it was easy to read the
translation:

    
    
       A function, as any other thing in Python, is a object.
    

Perfect? No. Usable? Absolutely.

As soon as a French -> English pack is released I'll buy it, even if it's
$100.

This is the kind of thing that would make it possible for me to move to
Montreal. I love that city, but don't know French. I could learn, but it would
take time and I'd be lost like a baby gazelle on the Serengeti while I
learned.

This app could ease the process of moving to an entirely different country.
That's amazing.

Hello, future, it's nice to see you.

~~~
istvanp
I live in Montreal and you are right that you would need to understand some
French but only to read signalization, some store names and public
advertisement. Signalization of course is important if you are driving but an
app like this won't help you (you are holding the wheel I hope). Besides that,
almost any store or institution has bilingual staff (and when they don't most
French speakers will understand basic English). Don't let that hold you
back... unless you hate snow and cold winters ;)

~~~
nihilocrat
I live in Montréal too and I'm chiming in that it's easy to live here with
only English, 25% of the city is natively anglophone. Some people in the
company I work at (also immigrants) see no reason to learn French, which the
quebecois probably don't want to hear.

It is easy to get the hang of signage too; lots of French words are spelt
almost identically in English, and the language is much easier to read than it
is to listen to. You should get the hang of it quickly.

On the other hand, if you have to get any kind of job that involves speaking
with customers ... you are shit out of luck.

------
acangiano
Whoever created this deserves the boatload of money they are going to make. It
has the potential of radically change the experience abroad for people
traveling in foreign countries.

~~~
mechanical_fish
If this thing can be made to do Chinese or Japanese... even if it does so
_haltingly_ , with mistakes...

Raise the price. For the love of god. _Raise the price._ This is much, much
more valuable than five bucks. There have been times in life where I'd gladly
have paid a dollar _per minute_ for this. And I'm a cheapskate.

~~~
dholowiski
If I was traveling to japan or china, I would gladly pay $50 per language to
translate. That's probably too high for an in-app purchase but I think $29
would be a no-brainer for languages that don't use English characters.

~~~
bruceboughton
True, but you are not necessarily representative of the market as a whole.

~~~
pchristensen
But if they're aiming for maximum $$ as opposed to maximum customers, that
price still might be worth pursuing.

------
aresant
The walls are coming down so fast it's making my head spin - job well done!

I immediately sent the link to a dozen people, about half wrote back "How much
is it?" and "How do I download it?"

Since QuestVisual.com is clearly going to sweep the entirety of the internets
by this time next week a few friendly conversion suggestions:

a) Change your button to "Try Word Lens FREE - Click Here"

b) The logo under your button looks like another button, just get rid of it.

Dropped you an email if you'd like the Conversion Voodoo team to bang out a
new page tomorrow AM gratis that's ready for installation by noon PST :).

~~~
webjunkie
omg.. please no "click here"

~~~
aresant
Please explain?

~~~
jrnkntl
He's referring to the fact that "click here" tells nothing about the link
itself (for SEO purposes). But in this particular case, it's just added to the
text "Try World Lens for FREE", so I don't know what's so wrong about it (or
why you get down-voted for just asking that question..)

------
cavorite
The product seems amazing, but they are somehow cheating in the video.

The signs (in Spanish) have grammar mistakes, but they are automatically
translated to correct English sentences. I have a few examples:

\- The third sign says "Lo traduce el texto", but that sentence doesn't make
sense. It should be "Traduce el texto" or even "Se traduce el texto".

\- 'Ropas opcional' sounds strange to me, although it may be accepted in some
countries.. It should be something like 'Ropas opcionales'.

I tried both examples in Google, Bing and Babel Fish and the results were OK,
so I don't think that Word Lens translator is very accurate.

    
    
        "Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will 
        the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to 
        apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke 
        such a question."

~~~
ThomPete
It's called marketing and frankly I don't think it takes anything away from
the app.

~~~
JeremyBanks
Sure it does. I'd be impressed with this app doing word-for-word translation
if that's what I expected. If On the other hand, if the examples uses
grammatically incorrect source material to give the impression that it can do
more than it can, I feel irritated at being misled, and I'm much less likely
to support the product.

~~~
ThomPete
So I take it that you are less likely to buy toothpaste or cleaning products?

------
frisco
These guys are going to have some hard decisions to make in the next few
months. This has such incredible potential I'd be really sad to see it get
bought and languish as a side-feature at Google. Run as a business, rather
than a free technology project liable to be side-lined on whatever whim, and
really developed for the next 5 years, think about what it could be! I mean,
just look at what it is today on day one!

The offers will come, that much is certain; I can only hope they decide to go
for it and turn this into something great.

~~~
51Cards
I doubt they will be bought by Google, Apple is probably already writing
cheques. Apple has been getting the pants beat off them by Google in mobile
translation for awhile now. If there is a patent behind this then Apple will
grab this for their stable just to keep it off the Android platform. It would
be a huge 'one-up' for them. (which makes me sad as I strongly prefer Android
devices) In time you'll see it licensed to other platforms as a new cash cow.

This should also be viewed as a prime example that it is not always better to
push complex processing into the cloud. This would not be possible trying to
push to a server somewhere real-time.

Kudos to this team.

~~~
ugh
I don’t think the translation is the amazing part – as one of the creators
said here, at the moment it mostly does word-for-word translation. Google’s
statistical machine translation is mightily impressive technology, I’m not
sure whether you could even theoretically put it on a phone at the moment.

You would ideally want the OCR and text replacement together with Google’s
translation algorithms, which, besides requiring a network connection at the
moment, would also introduce way too much lag that would kill the experience.

(Word-for-word translation is a perfect compromise in the meantime.)

~~~
dagw
Requiring a network connection would also make it useless while travelling
abroad, which would probably make up about 90% of the times when you'd
actually need this app. Not using a network connection is vital for this app
to be of any real use.

~~~
CamperBob
So do both. You're on the net, you get better results. You're not on the net,
you can still get by.

------
dholowiski
I showed this app to my 60 year old semi-technophobic parents and they
immediately understood it. They are ready to buy an iPod touch to use with
this app for their next cruise. My mom guessed the cost of a language at $50
and was shocked to hear the actual price.

Screw zuckerberg, The developers of this app should be on the cover of time
magazine.

~~~
tomjen3
And that is what you call a killer app.

------
jonursenbach
A friend of my girlfriend is part of the team that made this and he gave me a
demo of this 5 or 6 months ago and even back then when it was in an early
alpha form I was absolutely blown away by this thing.

Seeing this thing in action in real life is life changing.

~~~
jamiequint
I agree. I saw a demo at Epicenter cafe randomly by this guy about 6 months
ago. Its one of the only demos I've ever seen where I felt like 'holy shit
I've just seen the future'.

------
ianferrel
I downloaded it immediately. Making it free to try and selling the
dictionaries is a great sales model. The demo mode does a mirror-image
reversal of the word to show you that it can detect words.

I was using a 4th gen iPod Touch, so lower-res camera and no flash.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get it to work as well as I'd hoped. I tested
physical copies of a few things:

1\. Mac OS X Snow Leopard cd case. Black sans-serif text on white background.
This worked the best, with the word-reversal consistently getting "Snow" and
"Leopard" reversed with little flicker. "Mac" seemed to go in and out. OS was
rarely replaced, and usually along with "Mac" as though it were part of the
same word.

2\. C++ Programming language book cover
(<http://pixhost.info/pictures/631454>). Dark blue serif text on white. This
almost never worked. When it did recognize letters, the recognition shifted so
much that the word was a constantly moving jumble.

3\. Throat Coat tea bag. White serif text on Red. At any point in time, about
50% of the words were recognized and reversed.

You can take a snapshot, and each word it recognizes is highlighted, which is
pretty cool.

I would definitely buy something like this that handled non-romance languages
to English.

~~~
ugh
The current iPod touch has only a very low res, low quality camera (I think
VGA or maybe a bit better, in any case less than 1 MP) without even autofocus.
It would be nice if someone could try it with an iPhone to see if it fares
better.

~~~
eml
Right. Wikipedia says: 0.7MP fixed-focus camera with HD video capture (720p at
30fps) with 960 x 720 resolution still images

I believe the iPhone 3GS/4's autofocus makes a huge difference in clarity for
close-ups.

------
bobf
I work in the translation industry, and the interesting part of this to me is
the implementation. Generating the resulting translation image in real time is
a unique idea that is probably hard to make work well. OCR on a mobile device
without a network connection is not as difficult as you might think (read: it
can fairly easily be done on Android with tesseract-ocr, at least). Also,
instead of the typical rule-based or statistical machine translation you get
on the web, think of translating word-by-word as simply substituting words
from a key/value dictionary list.

Having said that, I'm always glad to see interesting translation being
developed and getting such a positive reaction on HN. Congratulations to Word
Lens on launching!

------
veb
This has to be the first real iPhone application that's actually impressed me.
Something that can definitely change lives.

------
zzleeper
I agree that it's impressive, but the flash video felt like cheating.

For instance, no spanish speaker would EVER say "LO TRADUCE EL TEXTO" (@
0:20), or "ROPAS OPCIONAL" (@ 0:50). They just picked some words in spanish
that made sense when translated, but my guess is that average translation
would be much more awful

~~~
sirrocco
As others have said it doesn't really matter if the translation is awful.
Given a context, and a poor translation into my native language - I will
understand what it says.

Unless it translates `apple` as `chair` - I'll understand what the meaning is.

------
blhack
I'm sure I'm too late to the game to have anybody care about this, but here is
how you can tell this is something cool:

I just went to the local bar with my roomate and, despite it being pretty
busy, I told one of the bartenders "Hey, want to see something cool?" and
pointed my phone at their menu. Now, almost immediately after I said this, I
realized it was kindof rude (they were busy), but she looked anyway...then she
proceeded to yell at all the other bartenders to come over and check it
out...and the guy sitting next to me spent about a minute going over the menu
(translating from english to spanish) wowed as well.

You're not going to get that with angry birds.

Awesome.

------
zacharyvoase
If Smartphone + Wikipedia + Google = Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, then
this is the Babel fish.

And I’m sure that it will also, by effectively removing all barriers to
communication between different cultures and races, cause more and bloodier
wars than anything else in the history of creation.

~~~
Groxx
Ultimately leading to faster-than-light travel by harnessing the speed of bad
news.

See what you've done?!

------
seldo
One day tourists are going to buy "holiday glasses". They'll walk around
Paris, stop at a nice restaurant, put on their glasses, and read the whole
menu in English. Then they'll order by pointing. Hell, they can do this with
their phone right now, the glasses just make it easier.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Head-mounted displays have been around for so long in a crappy form. I can't
wait until Oakley or Apple finally catch the HMD bug and make something nice.
Maybe this kind of app will be the push.

------
glhaynes
Saw this comment on TechCrunch, sums it up perfectly:

 _When I was a kid, I would have bet all the money I would ever earn that we'd
have flying cars before the ability to do something like this with a phone.
Amazing. Absolutely amazing._

------
muon
They could have stopped at just translating and printing it on the screen, but
they show it the original form, that is the difference between doing things
and doing the things beautifully.

I am spellbound.

~~~
ebaysucks
I agree - showing the original form is a big part of the WOW factor.

------
jorgem
AUDIO OUT for the blind.

EDIT: People with limited vision are often considered blind, so they could use
this app.

~~~
foresterh
Not to sound harsh, but I don't think the blind would find a lot of use for
this app...

~~~
iskander
I know many blind people who use iphones, and they'd love a tool to help them
read street signs, cereal boxes, etc...

Blind people are patient by necessity, I'm sure there are many who wouldn't
mind waving around their phone scanning for text.

~~~
elliottcarlson
While I am sure that there is a use as an aide, and I have known blind people
who are both patient and very independent, I doubt they would stand on street
corner waving a phone around hoping to catch some text.

That doesn't rule out that text to speech with translation wouldn't be
beneficial - just not in this context imho.

------
kmfrk
To quote Fry "Shut up and take my money!".

What is the ETA on French and German?

------
knieveltech
I. Am. Totally. Floored. Just wow. The last time I checked in on assisted
reality apps for the iPhone there where cheesy laser tag apps and stuff to
hang tag clouds in random locations. Interesting I guess but nothing to
produce a visceral response. If I where you your shoes I'd see about buying a
wheelbarrow for the money that's coming your way.

------
stcredzero
This might just be the first commercially successful mainstream application of
augmented reality.

------
kilian
This app is too cool, but it seems a little over eager. Here's me pointing the
app at a mosaic:
[http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg612/scaled.php?tn=0&server=...](http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg612/scaled.php?tn=0&server=612&filename=mwef.jpg&xsize=640&ysize=640)

~~~
mattdeboard
Cool hack, and I noticed that as well (on other non-word objects). However I'd
rather it be over- than undereager or slow.

------
ericflo
I just caught myself thinking: "I hope they got a software patent on this,
they deserve it." But I usually hate software patents unequivocally. So, yet
again, a real-world use case reminds me that nothing is so black and white.

~~~
whatever_dude
The problem is that it is a clever combination of techniques that already
exist.

* OCR, to identify the text * Removing the background of the text, filling it with surrounding colors * Translating words * Placing new words on the same area, using the same rectangle

It's very, very clever, but it's not something that should be controlled by
one person or company. Should any combination of existing techniques will also
be patentable? Where do we draw the line?

They were the first and they'll have a head start and make a lot of money.
Now, be exclusive? I don't think so.

~~~
catch23
As a friend who knows octavio, they've tried various "OCR" techniques from
typical journal papers and in general those types of algorithms were mostly
for static images. They struggled for 2 years to find the best techniques and
I think they final product is great.

------
bigmac
So, predictions on how long until Google buys these guys? I'd guess within the
next 7 days.

~~~
Raphael
Apple could outbid.

~~~
d2viant
The US military could outbid both of them.

~~~
ams6110
The military has no interest in owning a software company.

~~~
wtallis
The military doesn't have to make a bid to buy them. All they have to do is
throw down a billion dollar contract for prototyping an arabic version and
Quest Visual will have no reason to sell.

------
codybrown
Can I install this in my contact lens?

------
stevenrace
Quite the understated title - a feat well worth hyperbole.

Can you speak upon the origins of the software?

Did this stem about from other projects/research (Edu, darpa, lone
disillusioned coder..)?

I presume one could use dictionaries of things other than plaintext? Say
symbols, objects, patterns? (for signage and 'custom' use)

Are you opposed to this being 'opensourced' at any time?

------
forkrulassail
Seems dead.

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an
ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Apache/2.2.16 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.16 OpenSSL/0.9.7a mod_fcgid/2.3.5
Phusion_Passenger/2.2.15 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4
FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at questvisual.com Port 80

~~~
prs
See <http://www.youtube.com/user/QuestVisual> for QuestVisual YouTube channel
and explanatory video.

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/word-lens/id383463868> for direct iTunes link.

------
ebaysucks
This is the first time in the last few years that I have been WOWed by new
technology.

Huge congrats, this really is magic to me. If you asked me yesterday I'd have
told you it's impossible to do.

------
michaelleland
And when they get Swedish, I'm in!

The awesome thing is that once the platform is there, they could easily open
it up to other languages and get them rolling too--though they might have to
really think before diving into languages with a different character set, such
as Japanese.

~~~
maukdaddy
Another vote for Swedish. I'd pay a lot more than 9.99 too ;)

------
trotsky
You win.

------
ig1
I hope you guys are on AWS or something, because your server is going to get a
lot of traffic over the next few days...

------
revorad
This is one of those times you have to admit it's not ALL about the execution.
Good ideas do matter. And they are rare.

~~~
staunch
And I see the opposite. Anyone could have had this idea, but very few could
execute on it. In fact all that will determine whether this is a big success
or not is whether the thing _really_ works or not (execution).

~~~
revorad
A lot of people must have thought of making OCR iPhone apps. But the idea of
using OCR to do real-time language translation superposed on the original
background image? That's genius. I hadn't thought of it. Did you?

At least in my limited experience, deciding what to work on is really
important.

Acknowledging great ideas doesn't take away anything from their superb
execution.

~~~
jodrellblank
_I hadn't thought of it. Did you?_

I did: "One that I've mentioned in almost every post here for ages, a service
that I can take a photo, it does OCR and feeds the text into Google translate.
Bonus points if it does source-language-detection. More bonus points if it is
actually usable in a foreign country on real live things like signposts,
menus, timetables, advertisements, book covers, leaflets, etc." - me,
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=569838>

Nearly two years ago, travelling in a foreign country with an iPhone, knowing
Google Translate existed, knowing OCR existed, and not being able to do
anything with that knowledge.

(It's so rare that I hit this kind of advance view on things I'm going to be
shamelessly happy about it. NB, I'm not claiming anything here - I couldn't
write it and didn't try).

------
27182818284
It is amazing that you can get a piece of software for free (with language
packs for an extra low price)

This is something the US military would have paid millions and millions for in
the past. Now, you see people say, "I'd even pay fifteen whole dollars for
that app"

haha, oh wow.

------
sliverstorm
Do you see yourselves extending this to languages based on non-Latin
characters? This could be an amazing, amazing tool for Chinese characters-
both for foreigners and natives.

~~~
johndeweese
absolutely, though some character sets such as chinese are a few orders of
magnitude more complex. stretch goal, we're working on it :)

~~~
johndeweese
it's funny to think about how the advantages of compact encoding influenced
the progress of technology. would like to think that we're getting past this
by way of Unicode, but this is an analysis problem, so character 'visual
encoding' rears its head again.

of course, people are fantastically good at it, if trained in school. looking
at /other/ people's scripts though, well, here we are. :)

------
atomical
How many people are on the team that created this?

~~~
dannyr
Two guys: John and Otavio.

~~~
mattdeboard
My.

God.

~~~
catch23
Well Octavio did work a full year on it before finding John, and still took
another year of hard work before they were able to release a quality product.

Hopefully this app is a home run for them!

------
timerickson
I have witnessed the future.

------
plusbryan
This app makes me want to travel, right now, so I can just try out the app.
Amazing.

------
m0nastic
That was the fastest $10 I've ever spent in the App Store. I'll echo most
people's sentiments, this is seriously cool (although I must look like an
idiot walking around my apartment pointing my phone at everything).

------
sportsTAKES
So cool! Cannot wait for more languages...

Holy smokes, when is the Chinese version going to be available?

Let me know if you need help with a Portuguese version, seriously.

Agree with some of the other comments that their logo and site design could
use a boost.

Killer idea, love it.

------
bambax
John Deweese, "one of the creators" says here that "it's a platform".

Here's one thing they could do: open the platform to distribute dictionaries
from third parties.

Questvisual could still sell "basic" or "standard" dictionaries for each
language pair, but they would also sell competing dictionaries, that could
either try to address the problem from a different angle (phrase translation
vs. word translation), or be specialized dictionaries: legal, medical, etc.

They would take a cut, of course, and they would create a market that they
would curate. Great wins for everyone!

------
pclark
This looks so magical and incredible I can't believe it'll work reliably in
the real world. If it does, wow.

------
ghshephard
Cute undocumented (that i could find) Easter egg on the Reverse Words feature
- It also 'corrects' the spelling. heh. (Discovered when it insisted the
reverse of "Shephard" was drehpehS)

~~~
jodrellblank
I guess that's an accidental part of word based OCR rather than a deliberate
spellcheck, I noticed it correct the name "Keysource" to "ecruosyeR"

------
foresterh
Even though I have no use for it, I bought the English to Spanish to try it
out. I'm blown away and these guys deserve to take away Facebook guy's man of
the year award... amazing...

------
relix
That's very, very impressive. Traveling would be so much easier with just this
app, amazing! Let's hope they'll support Asian languages in the future, for
round-the-world coverage.

------
covercash
I'd like an English to English add on so I can get dictionary definitions of
words using the 'pause' feature. This would also make visiting URLs in print
extremely easy!

------
yurylifshits
Re-posting here from my blog [http://yurylifshits.com/lessons-learned-from-
the-launch-of-w...](http://yurylifshits.com/lessons-learned-from-the-launch-
of-word-lens)

    
    
        The lessons I learned today from Word Lens
    

Everything is secondary to compelling usecase. Word Lens has strange company
name (QuestVisual), no logo, crappy landing page, and no PR preparation. But
its darn cool! And that's what matters.

Assembly innovation is really cool. Every piece of Word Lens was here, but
nobody made a perfect combination before today. Academic researchers will
never do another Word Lens, as they are overfocused on novelty and hate just-
assemble-the-pieces work.

Clever freemium business model. Word Lens is free, but you have to buy
language packs. "erase words" and "reverse words" are free demo modes to prove
that the app really works. Note, that you can even turn it into subscription
model with dictionary updates.

BlendBack is the heart of this invention. Word Lens goes like this: (1) detect
and recognize characters, (2) translate, (3) produce text in similar colors
and shape and blend it back to the picture. The last step is the most
innovative and can be used beyond Word Lens. E.g. one can do "Bar Code
replacer". Turn your phone on any barcode and see some picture there. Can be
used as a cheap replacement for road signs and ads.

No connection required. This is extremely important. 3G is unstable. WiFi is
not everywhere. 4G has not really arrived yet. When you travel, your carrier
can not cover you perfectly. I can see more and more essential apps that will
not require connection. "Yelp in a box" anyone?

Global appeal. This is not another geek's app. It is mom and pop's app. It is
an app for every country and and every village. We need to spend more time
outside Silicon Valley to find needs like this one.

Science fiction inspiration. Part of the reason for press craziness is that
Word Lens matched the science fiction story (Babel fish from "The Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy"). We love seeing SF concepts turning into reality. Let's
reread old classic and implement all other concepts from there :)

    
    
        What I would do next
    

Obvious: add more language packs. Asian languages can be a bit of a challenge
(recognition is harder).

Brainstorm pricing. A lot of options are available: different price for the
first month, bundle prices for several languages, one-time price discount (a
la 23andme), subscription model, enterprise package.

Put on hold all talks to investors and potential acquirers.

Immediately start working on versions for other platforms (Android,
Blackberry, Nokia, WinMo). Hire another person to do just that.

Run a contest: iPhone for the best "Word Lens in the wild" video.

~~~
wallflower
> Immediately start working on versions for other platforms (Android,
> Blackberry, Nokia, WinMo)

I disagree. I strongly believe this is close to the 1st successful iteration
of a killer app for mobile devices (the Babel Fish). One that other platforms
might not have for a while. I would be surprised if Apple has not already
reached out to invite them to One Infinite Loop to talk about their future
plans (not acquisition, but Android).

~~~
yurylifshits
That's can be the best deal: Apple invests, Word Lens keeps it iPhone only.

------
EwanG
So am I honestly the only person who's first thought on seeing this is... ooh,
give me a Japanese pack and I don't have to wait for scanlations anymore?

------
keiferski
Very impressive. I'm curious to see how it performs in the wild though -- can
it translate signs outdoors just as well as in a studio? I really hope so.

~~~
jf
It performs very nicely in the wild. One of the nice things about the "real
time" aspect of this app is that you can nudge the phone around until you get
a good translation.

~~~
solutionyogi
Joel, are you associated with the App Team OR just another geek impressed with
their technology?

~~~
jf
I know Otavio and John through SHDH.

I've known about this application for a long time, Otavio showed me an early
prototype of this running on his laptop over a year ago. I'm ecstatic that
they finally released it.

(I'm also happy that I was able to get their story on HN before TechCrunch :D)

~~~
solutionyogi
Yep, you beat them by 20 minutes. TechCrunch story is up as well. :)

------
koski
This might be a game changer.

The product is so cool and it seems to work so well, I have to admid that I am
a bit jealous. I would have been proud to be able to say "I did is".

To the executing team responsible of the application: be proud what you did.
Great work.

I am so happy for these guys. You believed it's doable and you did it.
Congratulations once again.

I would love to read the "project diary". How long did it take to, what were
the unexpected problems, etc.

------
KeithMajhor
Hacker Newsers usually downvote brief congratulatory comments. Seeing "you
win" take home over 20 points is indicative of just how exciting this is.

------
hebejebelus
That's truly fantastic. I don't have much use for Spanish->English, but I'm
going to buy it anyway for the sheer "wow" factor. Congratulations.

------
alain94040
At first the demo didn't work at all for me. Nothing would happen at all. Then
I tried to click on a few buttons, and text started dancing left and right,
with no apparent reason.

Then I got better at it. It seemed to reverse the words and letters more or
less fine.

Then I spent the $5 on the product for Spanish (could be handy). I'll happily
spend another $5 on a French version.

And I know how to impress everyone tomorrow!

------
xlorm
Do most mobile translation apps not require internet connections? That part
surprised me. I had assumed most apps do the work on a server.

~~~
jf
This app does all the work client-side in (30-60 frames per second) real time.

From what I understand, this is the only app that does that.

------
mrchess
I'm reading comments on this app on other blog sites and people say things
like "translations suck", "not worth your time".

Times like this remind me how ridiculous consumer expectations can be. People
still don't get that product development takes time and energy -- they just
like to criticize with their elitist expectations only because they own an
iPhone.

But yes, this app is great. Keep it up!

------
keyle
That is really awesome. I can't wait for them to add more languages. And it's
cheap... Anyone travelling would pay for it.

------
alex_c
It's easy to feel down when reading the news, but then something like this
comes along and... the future's going to be so cool! :)

I don't care if it even only works 20% of the time right now. The rest is
elbow grease and faster hardware - it'll get there.

It's not every day that you consciously realize - hey, the world just changed
today (for the better!).

------
iuguy
Just bought it, this is indeed impressive stuff. I bought both English ->
Spanish and the other way around. Not being a big speaker of Spanish I wasn't
sure how good the translation was but the Spanish to English is good enough
for my travels next year.

------
happyrichpinoy
The Japanese to English pack can't come soon enough. Manga comics here I come!

------
zbailey
I'm very surprised people have not mentioned this app does not work very well
(if at all) when the phone is in any orientation other than straight up and
down.

Why is it not possible for the developers to use the orientation
sensor/gyroscope to accomodate for this? Many times it's easier to fit a bunch
of text on the camera in landscape mode than the alternative. It's also a lot
more natural for me to hold my phone in landscape mode when using the camera.

Just my $0.02 and congrats on all the hubbub. Can't wait for more languages :)

~~~
WiseWeasel
You can hit the 'lock' button to switch the orientation to landscape.

~~~
CamperBob
On an iPad, but not on an iPhone.

~~~
WiseWeasel
Yes, on the iPhone. It's red, in the upper left corner. Once you unlock it,
it'll follow the device's orientation.

~~~
CamperBob
Ah, I see what you mean - I thought we were talking about the rotation lock
for the phone itself.

------
anonymoushn
I will pay you $500 for this when it can read Chinese and Japanese.

------
brianbreslin
I would pay $20 for japanese, chinese, korean, russian, arabic, and hindi
language packs. seriously. if i was traveling around the world, I would
HAPPILY drop $100 into this app.

------
atlei
Very cool implementation :-)

So what they have is

\- an OCR function that reads a few words from an (easy) image

\- a (simple) translator that translates the words into a different language
word for word

\- and then paints the translated words back using the same font/size

...continuously and quickly !

Don't get me wrong, this is cool and all, but it would be much more useful
with a single snapshot that translates better, instead of focusing on doing it
"realtime" (but the video wouldn't be as cool :-) )

The idea is nice, so I expect Evernote and Google to implement this ASAP ;-)

Good luck !!!

------
gce
Really beautiful and executed beautifully.

Just one small piece of feedback on the "commercial." It's a bit confusing for
the first 10-15 seconds or so. I was too busy looking at the iPhone screen and
not the billboards. Can I recommend an animated version with v/o?

Great work!

Edit: One more piece of feedback. The icon isn't nearly cool enough for how
cool this app is. My prediction is that you guys are going to make a boatload
of money, hire a designer sooner rather than later to spiff anything up.

------
jodrellblank
Wordlens, wow and thank you!

(Here's me desiring this a couple of years ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=569558> )

------
toumhi
Am I the only one to be surprised by the overwhelming reaction of the HN
crowd? Doing word by word translation is not so exciting from a technology
point of view, is it because all the other apps doing translation on a phone
are crap? I believe there are libraries that already store language
translations, right? Seriously wondering why everybody is jumping and shouting
how great and disruptive this is.

~~~
kelnos
I think it's more the speed, and the fact that it's not just doing the word-
by-word translation, but it's doing OCR first, and, as a nice touch, it at
least makes a vague effort to visually look similar to the original text
(well, color at least)... and it does all this without using a network
connection at all.

The 'traditional' method of firing up something like the Google Translate app,
manually (and potentially painfully, if it's a language that uses symbols you
aren't used to typing in on a regular basis) typing in the text, and maybe
waiting for a server in the cloud to spit back response... is just crap
compared to something like this. Even if Word Lens doesn't do proper
grammatical and idiomatic translation (yet?), it still seems like it'd be
super useful.

------
kevinelliott
Wow, so Douglas Adams' babelfish _is_ real, only it's an app for iOS.
Fantastic. You've got an exciting venture on your hands!

------
brosephius
for the sake of being contrarian, why all the freaking out? it's cool and all,
but it's OCR + translation, two things computers are already pretty good at
(not to mention word lens seems to be doing word-for-word translation, not
context-sensitive).

yeah doing it so fast on a mobile device is impressive, but am I alone in
thinking this isn't going to change the world?

~~~
atlbeer
Yep.

You are looking at a product from it's technical merits only.

From a product perspective, I can travel to any country in the world and read
the signs on the shop, read menus, or even learn the language since I have an
always available translator to help.

It makes the world smaller and more accessible. Those things always change the
world

------
oozcitak
This is amazing and has great potential. Imagine word-lens for conferences:
record the presentation -> translate the slides with Word Lens -> publish the
translated slides live to the conference audience. There are hundreds of ways
of making money from this technology, the iOS app should only be the
beginning.

------
bajsejohannes
This is mindblowing! I hope you make it for Android as well.

A minor thing about the webpage: If I want to share it on facebook (and I
do!), it does not come up with any sort of summary or images, like it normally
does for links. Now, I don't know exactly how it gets this information, but I
would definitely find out if I were you.

------
oscardelben
This is the first time I regret not having an iphone (I have an ipod touch
without camera). Good job guys!

------
code_duck
Wow, this is really cool, obviously.

Not sure if it's the lighting or the text I'm trying, but it does have a
tendency to make words dance around insanely. The execution could be improved
upon a bit.

I can certainly see a lot of potential for this. Let me know when it's
embedded in my augmented reality eyeglasses!

------
binbasti
I'd pay at least $50 for a Chinese-English language pack. And even just 50%
accuracy would be ok.

------
solutionyogi
Another cool real life example:

<http://twitpic.com/3gnduy>

------
tomelders
I give up. I will never make anything this amazing. What's the point now I've
seen this.

------
The_Igor
This is impressive! I could have really used something like this on my trip to
Japan!

------
brendano
Awesome.

One note, it'll be hard to get really good translation quality without a
network connection, because good models require tons of CPU and memory --
Google Translate is far better than word-for-word because it uses such things.

------
Groxx
Just saw this on the news, actually. Very much sorry, but I didn't catch the
channel / show - wasn't close enough to the TV, and it wasn't mine.

Seems like the attention for this has gone _way_ beyond HN. Congratulations!

~~~
solutionyogi
I saw it on CNN when I was visiting my dentist.

------
mrphoebs
Simply Brilliant

------
ebaysucks
Why the name Word Lens? I had to come back to this thread to remember the name
after talking to my brother about it.

I think "Babylon App" would be a perfect name for this app. Just my 2 cents.

~~~
bobf
Babylon is already the name of a translation software company (for >13 years,
see babylon.com).

------
elblanco
What's next, universal translators that also make everybody's lips move
correctly for the language we are hearing? Perhaps Star Trek got it correct?

Amazing...Android app next?

------
gursikh
I'd love to see this technology applied to augmented reading / writing (i.e.
look up any word/person/place on a printed page).

------
bambax
Looks extraordinary by the HN comments; unfortunately the site is down right
now... ;-(

La rançon du succès, I guess.

------
foresterh
The blanking words out feature is going to make photoshopping fake products
much easier...

------
pekinb
Can someone at questvisual say more about the platform? I have some ideas I'd
like to try.

~~~
johndeweese
we wrote everything ourselves. what would you like to try?

------
browngeek
This is going to do to traveling what the iPhone did to smartphones.

------
bl4k
Awesome. This should help me find my way around Redwood City

------
mcantor
I would pay $50 to have this on my Android device.

In a heartbeat.

------
EGreg
Wow is this the greatest # of points EVAR?

------
zentechen
How can I put it on my glasses?

------
uast23
Is that the coolest thing I have seen recently ?

------
cpr
The promo video's gotta be a fake--figuring out the fonts used & fitting in
the same space with perfect color, etc.? Nope.

Would like to see what it really does.

~~~
johndeweese
you'll have to download and try it :)

~~~
staunch
You will admit that those sample cards are hand picked to be well suited to
the application right? High contrast, quality printing, large fonts, etc.

~~~
johns
Download it and try it. Works pretty much as advertised.

~~~
ugh
It’s also free (not the translation part but the word recognition and
replacement part) so there is no excuse to not try it out yourself or getting
a friend to try it out for you (should you lack an iPhone).

------
rabble
Totally awesome, but there's a big problem. Most of the time when you're in
need of translation of text you find like signs, it's because you're in
another country. That means data is very expensive, because your fancy iphone
is locked and roaming.

It's awesome, many people may download it, but it will get very little use.
:-\ They should probably charge like $5 or $10 for it, make money on people
WANTING to use it, not on them actually using it.

Unless i'm mistaken and it's doing the image processing all locally, in that
case, they've got a smash hit.

~~~
solutionyogi
It said in App description that it does not need network connectivity. To
verify this claim, I put my iPhone in 'Airplane' mode and tried the sample
paper again. And I can confirm that it works without any network connectivity.

Also, the App is free but you have to pay for each language to language
translation separately. I think it's a smart move. I may buy 'Spanish to
English' for 4.99 if I am going to Mexico. If I end up in France 6 months down
the line, I will buy 'French to English' at 4.99. I won't worry about spending
4.99$ but they have successfully extracted 9.98 from me. This is awesome.

