Ever been confused at a restaurant in a foreign country and wish you could just scan your menu with your iPhone and get an instant translation? Well as of today you are one step closer thanks to Word Lens from QuestVisual.

The iPhone app, which hit iTunes last night, is the culmination of 2 1/2 years of work from founders Otavio Good and John DeWeese. The paid app, which currently offers only English to Spanish and Spanish to English translation for $4.99, uses Optical Character Recognition technology to execute something which might as well be magic. This is what the future, literally, looks like.

Founder Good explains the app’s process simply, “It tries to find out what the letters are and then looks in the dictionary. Then it draws the words back on the screen in translation.” Right now the app is mostly word for word translation, useful if you’re looking to get the gist of something like a dish on a menu or what a road sign says.

fafafafafafakking insane!

Wow! I almost don't believe this is real.

Wow. I can't wait until this branches off to other languages, too.

It's pretty cool, I didn't notice it was real time at first

Wowww. That IS really cool! It would be awesome once they expand it to more languages and make it more complex than just word-for-word translation!

The most impressive part about this to me is the augmented reality. The ability to erase the background and insert the translated text in (almost) real time is quite a feat. I assume it'll only properly work on solid backgrounds though.

I've heard that the app isn't fully functional though. Besides having to purchase each translator individually (I think $4.99 per language pack), the lighting and background/foreground contrast has to be perfect otherwise it doesn't work.

However, for a start, it really is nice. I can only imagine where technology will take us in the next couple years.

Damn it, when is the hover board going to get here already!

Originally Posted by siefer1322

Damn it, when is the hover board going to get here already!

http://www.fubiz.net/2010/05/26/hoverboard-project/

It works...so long as no one stands on it. And I'd think you'd be surprisingly happy when you see which hover-board it is.

Originally Posted by SilentWalker

The most impressive part about this to me is the augmented reality. The ability to erase the background and insert the translated text in (almost) real time is quite a feat. I assume it'll only properly work on solid backgrounds though.

This. I'd also like to know how it manages to recreate text with a similar font, though it seems like it's limited to using the new font in all caps. Also, the sample sentences shown in the video don't have many different kinds of punctuation, only periods, hyphens, and ellipses. I wonder how it reacts with apostrophes and commas? Does it recognize tildes and ampersands? Parentheses in different languages? What if I print off a short word in one language that translates to a long word in another language on a short sheet of paper? Will it auto-adjust the size? And how will it handle handwritten stuff, if at all?

This app triggers every curious nerve in my body. I'm probably going to spend the weekend yelling at everyone I know with an iPhone to download it so I can have my way with it.

Also, I like the Internet-less dictionary it uses.

Actually... This is a horrid app. It'll reduce the amount of adventure people/travellers have. My favourite past time in travelling? "I'll haaaaaave.... That."

wow, huge grammar mistake in the 3rd message...

EDIT: and I'm talking about the original text, not the translation!