Even though the search giant has bought Quest Visual, the makers of the Word Lens instantaneous translation app, last May, the functionality has only been integrated into the Google Translate app now.
You don’t have to visit a foreign country to know how important it is to speak more than just English. Sure, you can impress the locals by showing that you have learned a few of their words, but speaking foreign languages has become much more than just that. As a Czech proverb says, “You live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once.” Google means to play a major role in our lives by making sure you don’t get lost in translation while traveling or even while working, in case you’re part of a multicultural company. The latest update to the Google Translate app, which should be out today, integrates Word Lens and conversation translation tools, so that you can communicate and understand foreign words more easily.
Google Translate already had a rudimentary way of translating text captured with a mobile device’s camera, but the new update enables us to do that in real time. Before, you had to take a picture and highlight the words (by swiping your finger across them) you didn’t understand, so the new way of doing it is much more convenient, not to mention time-saving.
There are some limitations, at the moment, but those will go away in time, as the Word Lens functionality will be expanded to include more languages. For the time being, the supported languages for this feature are English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Supposing you need to translate some text (think of street signs, not novels) in real time, all you need to do is get the text onscreen, and the translation will be performed automatically.
Given that Microsoft has rolled out Skype Translator just a few days ago, you’d think that these two companies are competing against each other at diminishing language barriers for their users. In fact, they’re addressing the same problem from different angles, and Google plans to also get involved in translating conversations. The latest update of their app even includes the technology that allows people who don’t speak each other’s language to carry out a conversation. We really are living in the future, aren’t we?
Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the acquisition of Quest Visual by Google, or Google’s Translate Community site.
The makers of Word Lens, the smartphone app that uses the camera to translate foreign text into a known language, are now part of Google, who means to improve its own translation service.
Up until smartphones became mainstream, getting around in a foreign country without speaking the language of the locals was quite difficult. Fortunately, mobile apps can now help people learn new languages on the go, and when traveling, they facilitate the translation of foreign words and expressions into a language that you’re comfortable with. Word Lens took this one step further by enabling smartphone users to translate whatever words they had in front of their camera, supposing a data connection was available.
Google and Quest Visual have collaborated in the past on the Word Lens app that was specifically tailored for the search giant’s smart glasses. These two companies may actually be planning to get real-time translation to other categories of devices besides smartphones. Assuming that more smartwatches will be equipped with cameras in the future, and not just Samsung’s Gear family, it would definitely be nice to have Word Lens’ functionality at your wrist.
Word Lens is currently offered for free, along with all the language packs that the company offered over the time, which means that Google might actually choose to discontinue this product in order to incorporate the technology into its own Translate service. Still, that’s not really a certainty. After all, Google also bought the makers of the Timely app a while ago and made the app free in the Play Store, but didn’t discontinue it. To be fair, they didn’t bring any improvements, either, so the reasons behind that acquisition are anyone’s guess.
As always, the ones to benefit the most from Google’s acquisition of Quest Visual are the users of the Word Lens app, and above all, of the Translate app, which will definitely be updated to include Word Lens’ functionality in the not so distant future.
Below is the promo video that Quest Visual made for their Word Lens app at the time of the launch:
Once wearables become mainstream, translation services will change the way people interact, and Google Translate will be a prime example of that, with its newly gained capabilities.
Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the revamp of Google Translate for Android from two years ago, and the VizLingo service that translates video to text acoustically.