We did a little blip last week about an iPhone App that, when you point it at some Spanish writing, it showed it translating it into English – Space Age!
Kindly he’s looked at the App in more detail this weekend and sent VB a more through review. Feel free to contact us if you’d like to review something.
Here’s Andy’s review – Ed.
Islander Andy W near-instantly downloaded the App to test – as he was fortunately in Spain at the time.
Review (of Spanish to English plugin) 20 Dec 2010
(I should point out that I’m using the iPhone 3GS and that my review may be jaded as the App relies on the camera – an iPhone 4 may bring about different results)
My initial ‘on-the-spot’ reaction seems to be fairly accurate. Whilst Word Lens is a remarkable concept, it does seem to have some issues which inhibit the performance somewhat.
A steady hand needed
You’ll need a steady hand for starters, too much movement tends to consistently jumble the letters. You are often left with ‘replacement translated text’ flitting between 2 or 3 words, resulting in too much analysis of a sentence to understand.
Quite accurate
I found that directly translating word for word quite accurate, but phrases and more creative copy was troublesome. So useful for scanning the label on a medicine box, but understanding adverts becomes more of a challenge.
It does however, have a built-in translation function whereby you can pause the screen, click any highlighted word and review a list of suggested similar words, a useful technique.
Overall
Overall, a great idea flawed by the complexity of language translation (and possibly my 3GS camera), it may just need time for the translation technology to catch up.
