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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 http://imgur.com/EYs

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 http://imgur.com/EYsko What the App shows in REALTIME: http://imgur.com/FhaSW http://imgur.com/FhaSW Comparison with Google Translate: http://imgur.com/GOd94.jpg 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!

zzleeper 16y ago
Because "dead end" means "callejon sin salida". That's the correct translation (callejon = road, sin salida = w/out exit). On the other hand, "muerto fin" has NO meaning in spanish, (and that's what you get when you translate word for word without context).
- solutionyogi 16y ago
  Thank you. I think context is extremely important and very difficult to get right. I remember reading one article by Google engineer where they discuss how they keep improving their analysis of search queries. E.g. [Search Term] -> [Interpretation] New York -> New York city New York Times -> The news paper New York Times Square -> Famous tourist spot in NYC. There were other examples in the article. I will try to find that article and link it up. I think Google should buy these guys and provide them with their knowledge of 'context'. Google Translate team and these guys should talk right away.
  - alexscheelmeyer 16y ago
    Was it this one? http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/al...
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    I used to work in machine translation, about 15 years ago. At the time, one of the big things they were working on was an improvement to the contextual inferences. The prior versions were able to consider context within a single sentence, and input documents could be tagged with a subject area, so the system would know to resolve ambiguities in favor of, say, medical terms. The best examples of this, I thought, were the following passages: Yesterday I went to the symphony. The sound was beautiful. versus Yesterday I went to Long Island. The sound was beautiful. In the first passage, sound refers to an auditory experience; in the second, it refers to a body of water. Within the sentence "The sound was beautiful", there's no way to know which to use, so one must look to surrounding information to make a guess. But I've given a short and clear example; anyone can see the right solution. But in real-life usage it's frequently unclear.
  - pshc 16y ago
    context is extremely important and very difficult to get right Yep... solving "context" 100% is equivalent to solving A.I.!
- StavrosK 16y ago
  "Muerto fin" means "an ending that has died", no?
  - omaranto 16y ago
    No, that would be "fin muerto"; "muerto fin" is gibberish.
    - StavrosK 16y ago
      Ah, thanks.
gus_massa 16y ago
(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 16y ago
  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.
  - solutionyogi 16y ago
    John, still, this is amazing for the first iteration. I wish you could licence 'grammar logic' from Google Translate and incorporate in your App.
  - mistermann 16y ago
    Word for word is far, far better than nothing. And no network connection required, so awesome. Roaming charges when travelling are brutal, so very important feature. Real time OCR + word for word translation....maybe its not particularly technically interesting on paper, but to watch it on a handheld device in front of your eyes is breathtaking. Do you have a timeline for other languages? (Japanese)
    - dholowiski 16y ago
      Yeah, no network connection is the killer app here, since you're probably going to need this in another country where you probably don't have network access.
ygd 16y ago
(2 years of classroom Spanish here.) I like how "Make right turn" becomes "Make correct turn".
- narag 16y ago
  It becomes "make correct shift" (as in "I work in the night shift"). The word in Spanish would be "giro". The natural translation would be "gira a la derecha".
  - omaranto 16y ago
    "gira a la derecha" is correct but not idiomatic in every country; in Mexico we say "da vuelta a la derecha".
  - omaranto 16y ago
    "turno" can mean either "shift" as in "I work the night shift" or "turn" as in "it's my turn now" (but not the turning sort of "turn").
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
omaranto 16y ago
"make right turn" is apparently hard! Word Lens translates it to "make correct turn" but where "turn" is in the sense of taking turns not in the sense of turning. Google Translate gives "to the right which in turn".

zzleeper 16y ago

Because "dead end" means "callejon sin salida". That's the correct translation (callejon = road, sin salida = w/out exit). On the other hand, "muerto fin" has NO meaning in spanish, (and that's what you get when you translate word for word without context).

solutionyogi 16y ago
Thank you. I think context is extremely important and very difficult to get right. I remember reading one article by Google engineer where they discuss how they keep improving their analysis of search queries. E.g. [Search Term] -> [Interpretation] New York -> New York city New York Times -> The news paper New York Times Square -> Famous tourist spot in NYC. There were other examples in the article. I will try to find that article and link it up. I think Google should buy these guys and provide them with their knowledge of 'context'. Google Translate team and these guys should talk right away.
- alexscheelmeyer 16y ago
  Was it this one? http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/al...
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  I used to work in machine translation, about 15 years ago. At the time, one of the big things they were working on was an improvement to the contextual inferences. The prior versions were able to consider context within a single sentence, and input documents could be tagged with a subject area, so the system would know to resolve ambiguities in favor of, say, medical terms. The best examples of this, I thought, were the following passages: Yesterday I went to the symphony. The sound was beautiful. versus Yesterday I went to Long Island. The sound was beautiful. In the first passage, sound refers to an auditory experience; in the second, it refers to a body of water. Within the sentence "The sound was beautiful", there's no way to know which to use, so one must look to surrounding information to make a guess. But I've given a short and clear example; anyone can see the right solution. But in real-life usage it's frequently unclear.
- pshc 16y ago
  context is extremely important and very difficult to get right Yep... solving "context" 100% is equivalent to solving A.I.!
StavrosK 16y ago
"Muerto fin" means "an ending that has died", no?
- omaranto 16y ago
  No, that would be "fin muerto"; "muerto fin" is gibberish.
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    Ah, thanks.

gus_massa 16y ago

(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 16y ago
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.
- solutionyogi 16y ago
  John, still, this is amazing for the first iteration. I wish you could licence 'grammar logic' from Google Translate and incorporate in your App.
- mistermann 16y ago
  Word for word is far, far better than nothing. And no network connection required, so awesome. Roaming charges when travelling are brutal, so very important feature. Real time OCR + word for word translation....maybe its not particularly technically interesting on paper, but to watch it on a handheld device in front of your eyes is breathtaking. Do you have a timeline for other languages? (Japanese)
  - dholowiski 16y ago
    Yeah, no network connection is the killer app here, since you're probably going to need this in another country where you probably don't have network access.

ygd 16y ago

(2 years of classroom Spanish here.) I like how "Make right turn" becomes "Make correct turn".

narag 16y ago
It becomes "make correct shift" (as in "I work in the night shift"). The word in Spanish would be "giro". The natural translation would be "gira a la derecha".
- omaranto 16y ago
  "gira a la derecha" is correct but not idiomatic in every country; in Mexico we say "da vuelta a la derecha".
- omaranto 16y ago
  "turno" can mean either "shift" as in "I work the night shift" or "turn" as in "it's my turn now" (but not the turning sort of "turn").

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

omaranto 16y ago

"make right turn" is apparently hard! Word Lens translates it to "make correct turn" but where "turn" is in the sense of taking turns not in the sense of turning. Google Translate gives "to the right which in turn".