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Microsoft Translator App For Android Can Now Translate Text In a Photo
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.
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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?
Word Lens already does this, and from the real time video your phones camera picks up.....
Rumor says it mistook Michelle Obama for text, and translated her as, "Tadpoles ride yellow benevolent bicycles".
Table-ized A.I.
Other apps have - including one on my non-Android phone - have been able to do this for awhile now.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So it's not a translator app, but it will give your OCR'd text if it's present.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I immediately deleted Microsoft Translate as it knows only several languages. It knows none of the languages I am interested in (incl. my native Czech language). It really cannot compare with Google Translate. I do not understand it much, Microsoft has tons of money to pay more people for writing the vocabularies / whatever.
Going to concentrate on Japanese/English for this post because it is an area I have to deal with...
I know that google translate absolutely murders JapaneseEnglish translations. To the point of, you don't use it unless you already can speak the language and feed it individual words. Id the MS one can do better than that, then it is a plus. The OCR stuff I am also curious on how accurate it is - again Kanji is pretty dang dense and without stroke order help, just about everything I've used up to this point is a joke.
If it is on the same level as google translate, then forget it it, this is indeed a press release only...
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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 will pull out complete sentences and then translate them in context for an even better translation.
Welcome to 2014 Microsoft, don't bother watching the terminator film next year, it's shit.
When I try to translate the article it just reads
Malkovitch Malkovitch Malkovitch
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You tools at MS do realize that Google has been doing this since kerosene was invented, right?
Kudos for catching up to forever ago though. What will you do for your next trick? Invent a motorized horse buggy?
Oblig. Google Translate vs La Bamba
For those that still haven't seen it.
This has been a Windows phone feature since the first Nokia Lumia. The OCR and translation were usable, but not much more than that. So Microsoft is not new to this, they just ported their app to Android.
Do not see how this is big news.
My phone is full of photos of food packaging from the time I spent 4 months in Germany over a year ago, Google translate could do this back then.
Congratulations to Microsoft for achieving another milestone. At this rate they'll catch up to their competitors in a few years. Wonder what's next maybe a smartphone with Linux on it?
Congratulations Microsoft on re-inventing Google Translate!