I’ve known about them for a while but not bothered to try actually using a
phone based AR style translator app, which finally seem to be able to produce usable results.
Essentially iOS, Win Phone, or Androids all have apps that use the camera to either commonly
take a picture then translate the text it can see, or their are fewer in the category of apps that
can translate in real time just by aiming the camera at something.
This is one for iOS and Android that I’ve found to be decent.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.intsig.camdict&hl=en
Win Phone has Bing evidently, Android also has Google translate, though both are capture based.
Frankly, although you may have to move around with the camera more, this is very much easier than
having to break book spines or rip out pages to get scans, then OCR a page, then translate the output after much proofing. I’ve never seen anything this accurate on kanji right from the get go. On that alone, it’s a useful resource.
The CamDictionary above is free for a limited use (ie trial) but the full is like $2.50. So far it worked well on printed office japanese type. It’s done moderately on some of the AIC interview text. Only big draw back I see is it doesn’t appear to do vertical Japanese text.
None the less, it’s certainly worth a download and try it out, see what you can get. Also be on the lookout for more apps like these, as I think they probably are a good chance to get a lot translated pretty quick. For example all the captures are saved and get be exported too… it’d make short work of the novels, if it could read vertically.
So eyes and ears open folks, there’s a new player in town.
