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I was in Japan recently and they sell these pocket size translator devices with a microphone, camera and screen. You can speak to it or take pictures and it wil

I was in Japan recently and they sell these pocket size translator devices with a microphone, camera and screen. You can speak to it or take pictures and it will translate on the fly. Maybe $100 usd range for a nice one. It's only a matter of time before someone makes a similar device with a decent LLM on it, and premium ones will have more memory/cpu power.

tyree731 3y ago
I think we as humans have a tendency to extrapolate from our present position to a position we can imagine that we’d like, even if there isn’t a foreseeable path from here to there. I believe this may end up being one of those cases.
- Zuiii 3y ago
  Why? What GP describes seems both feasible and inevitable to me.
nmfisher 3y ago
I mean...isn't that just a smartphone? I know exactly what you're talking about because my father-in-law had the same thing. I'm just very skeptical that specialist hardware will overtake general commoditized computing devices for mass-market usage. The economics alone make it unlikely.
- rvnx 3y ago
  Yes, usually they are locked-down Android devices. One of them has an unlimited "free forever" internet subscription so it can fetch network translations online if the local dictionary doesn't have the word.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Even though Word Lens was first released over 12 ago, I keep surprising people[0] by showing them the same technology built into Google Translate. [0] even other tech developers who, like me, migrated somewhere where a language barrier came up
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    Yes, that is because Google bought the technology from Word Lens in 2015. Wiki says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ot%C3%A1vio_Good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ot%C3%A1vio_Good To develop Word Lens, Otávio Good founded Quest Visual Inc., which was acquired by Google, Inc. in 2014, leading to the incorporation of the Word Lens feature into the Google Translate app in 2015.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      I think you misunderstand. The people I show it to are surprised that it's possible in 2023, even though it was demoed at the end of 2010. Not only have they never heard of Word Lens, they are also obvious of the corresponding feature of Google Translate.

tyree731 3y ago

I think we as humans have a tendency to extrapolate from our present position to a position we can imagine that we’d like, even if there isn’t a foreseeable path from here to there. I believe this may end up being one of those cases.

Zuiii 3y ago
Why? What GP describes seems both feasible and inevitable to me.

nmfisher 3y ago

I mean...isn't that just a smartphone? I know exactly what you're talking about because my father-in-law had the same thing. I'm just very skeptical that specialist hardware will overtake general commoditized computing devices for mass-market usage. The economics alone make it unlikely.

rvnx 3y ago
Yes, usually they are locked-down Android devices. One of them has an unlimited "free forever" internet subscription so it can fetch network translations online if the local dictionary doesn't have the word.
ben_w 3y ago
Even though Word Lens was first released over 12 ago, I keep surprising people[0] by showing them the same technology built into Google Translate. [0] even other tech developers who, like me, migrated somewhere where a language barrier came up
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  Yes, that is because Google bought the technology from Word Lens in 2015. Wiki says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ot%C3%A1vio_Good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ot%C3%A1vio_Good To develop Word Lens, Otávio Good founded Quest Visual Inc., which was acquired by Google, Inc. in 2014, leading to the incorporation of the Word Lens feature into the Google Translate app in 2015.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    I think you misunderstand. The people I show it to are surprised that it's possible in 2023, even though it was demoed at the end of 2010. Not only have they never heard of Word Lens, they are also obvious of the corresponding feature of Google Translate.