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Bobby Travis

This is a post by Bobby Travis, who wrote with me at 40Tech from 2009 through 2012. Bobby has since moved on to bigger and better things, but I've left all of his great contributions up on the site. - Evan

Latest posts by Bobby Travis (see all)

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• Google Chrome Explodes On To iOS, Puts Desktop Experience In Your Pocket - June 30, 2012

File this under very cool and potentially useful. Word Lens is the kind of app you will want to have on you when travelling, or when presented with text in a language you don’t understand that you just have to know the translation of. I say “will want” because, so far, it only works with Spanish and English, so it is useless for your other translation needs. It’s still awesome, though — the bees knees, even.

All this iOS app needs is a device with a camera, and — with no network required — it will translate the text that the camera sees, in real time. It works surprisingly well, too! I think that, next to (prepare for Star Trek reference) a Universal Translator, this is best thing to happen to translation software in a while. Maybe Google will buy them and offer the tech for free some day soon. For now, however, even though the app looks free, it will actually cost you $10 per language set. That means that you need to spend $10 to get it to translate Spanish to English and another $10 for the vice versa. For what it does, though, and especially as it adds in more languages, Word Lens might actually be worth it.

Check out the video below:

Word Lens is a Mind-Blowing App that Translates Any Text Your Camera Can See On the Fly [Lifehacker]