Two cool ways of doing language translation on mobile devices.
The first, Word Lens (which got a lot of press a few weeks ago), uses the iPhone’s camera to overlay visual translations of text. It’s a cool, augmented-reality-like, magic lens.
The second is the soon-to-be-launched (ie. still in alpha) update to Google Translate.
“Essentially, this allows you to speak in one language into your phone and the app will read it out loud translated into the language of the person you’re speaking with. That person can then respond and it will translate it back into your language.” (Via TechCrunch.)
What’s so cool about the Google app is that it can become virtually invisible in your conversation. It’s awfully close to being a Universal Translator.
Jibbigo has offered a similar app for the iPhone, but at $25 per language, compared to Google’s presumed free, I’d imagine that it’going to be hard for them to keep going.
