Microsoft Translator App For Android Can Now Translate Text In a Photo 31
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has updated its Translator app for Android to add the ability to recognize the text inside a photo. The photo, Microsoft explains, can be something that you have clicked on your phone as well as an image stored on your phone or cloud. "With this new feature in the Translator app for Android, you can translate pictures instantly from your phone, with the translation appearing in an overlay above the existing text. If you see a sign, menu, flyers, etc. you can point your phone's camera at it, and you won't have any confusion about what you're looking at. You can also translate saved images such as pictures from emails, the Internet and social media," the company wrote in a blog post. The new feature supports simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. Additionally, the new update adds 34 languages to the list of available downloaded language packs for use when you're not connected to the Internet.
They should use Photoshop technology (Score:2)
Instead of overlaying the text, it should replace the text on the signs so it will translate and keep the original style.
Much like how in Dr. Who the TARDIS translates.
Malkovitch (Score:2)
When I try to translate the article it just reads
Malkovitch Malkovitch Malkovitch
Re: (Score:2)
While not perfect, this is exactly what google translate's app does.
Um...? (Score:5, Insightful)
A summary covering this, not mentioning that Google Translate, which comes with Android, has been able to do basically this for a long time? Are we sure this wasn't a paid story?
Mod parent up - smells like a press release (Score:1)
Other apps have - including one on my non-Android phone - have been able to do this for awhile now.
Re: Um...? (Score:5, Informative)
Not even the entire truth. The Google one will translate text in a moving image or camera feed too. Literally point your phone over a menu and it replaces parts of the image it recognises as text with same-colour translated text in real-time.
Word Lens (Score:3)
Word Lens already does this, and from the real time video your phones camera picks up.....
Re:Word Lens (Score:4)
Word lens was acquired by Google and incorporated into Google Translate.
http://questvisual.com/ [questvisual.com]
I misread the title (Score:2)
I thought it said it translates text "into" a photo. Like I could ram text form some book description into it and get a visual image. Which would be awesome--- or maybe it would be.
And them if you had the reverse, something converting photos to text you could lock the two in a loop and see what happened.
You'd probable converge to a picture of a banana or maybe goatse if it tried to learn from the internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, Microsoft is only 15 years late to the party.
I say 15 years because unlike WordLens (now Google Translate), the Microsoft app only seems to work server-side.
I bet MS AI will embarrass itself yet again (Score:1)
Rumor says it mistook Michelle Obama for text, and translated her as, "Tadpoles ride yellow benevolent bicycles".
Google Goggles has done this for years. (Score:2)
So it's not a translator app, but it will give your OCR'd text if it's present.
Re: (Score:2)
Google Translate on the other hand is a translator app, and has also done this for quite some time already.
Poor set of supported languages (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Google Translate (Score:2)
The title says it all. I just moved to a country where I don't know the language and I rely on this daily (although I've gotten good enough in 6 months here that I'm able to read pretty much everything if I know the context).
Google Translate allows you to either get a continuous video feed and have it translate words from a variety of languages in real time. However if you do this it misses the context translating only word for word.
If you click on the screen it will snap a picture. At that point the OCR wi
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds almost exactly the same as any Apple announcement for the past few years. Apple is doing this amazing new thing, no mention of Google and Microsoft beating them to it years ago.
La Bamba (Score:1)
Oblig. Google Translate vs La Bamba [youtube.com]
For those that still haven't seen it.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, that is way better than last time I looked at it. I will have to make sure I have this loaded next time I travel to the caribbean.
Congratulations Microsoft (Score:1)
Congrats! (Score:2)