I have worked with machine translation in Google and also with high end translation systems. The result is never perfect. They can often but not always give you a general understanding of what a sentence means in another language. It is dangerous to depend on a precise translation without expert human help.
Word Lens is an App that allows you to smartphone camera scan a sentence and then it quickly provides a translation. Right now it is available only for English to and from Spanish. The basic App is free, but each to and from language module costs $5. A second limitation is the image recognition aspect. It works best with distinct letters that have minimal background. The system must separate letters from background and the letters must be clearly and distinctly seen. I would also not expect it to do well with the semantic complexity of a paragraph of prose either.
So this is a great direction. Yet it depends on two yet unsolved problems. Image recognition and machine translation.
As their clever video shows, this can be useful for easily translating signs and headlines. It eliminates the need to type in the letters into a translation system. Yet I would again be careful about understanding even minimal subtlety in the message itself. Would be useful , with caution, when you are working with signage or short phrases in a language you know minimally.
A hands on test by Ars Technica.
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