We have seen mobile apps that allow you to speak in one language and have the audio translated into another language. Google Goggles aims to give you a quick way to translate text using your phone’s camera.
You just draw a frame around words that you want to translate on that box of cereal in Barcelona, hit the shutter button, then if it is readable by your device you have the option to choose what language into which you need it translated. At the moment it can read English, French, Italian, German and Spanish and translate into ‘many more’ languages. Reading non-Latin characters in Chinese, Hindi and Arabic is coming ‘eventually’. Goggles v1.1 Is capable of other things as well, such as logo and product recognition, as well as doing visual searches via your phone’s photo library.
I have not tried it yet but I would love to. If you have any feedback you like to share with the Digital Media Minute readership, I’m sure we’d love to hear about it in the comments. By the way does anyone else think it’s cool that you can download android apps simply by scanning QR code? How far have we come from having to run down to ye olde electronics store to buy a CD in a box and install it via a physical drive?
