Real time translations through your camera

Word Lens Translator is an application that provides real time translations on your Android device by using its camera.

Lost in translation?

Traveling to another country without speaking the language is nerve wracking. While Word Lens won’t teach you to speak a new language, it will enable you to read it at the very least. Word Lens uses your Android device’s camera to detect text and automatically translate words and sentences on the fly. 

A window onto a new language

Word Lens is very simple to use. You just hold your phone or tablet up to a sign or a piece of text in another language and watch the screen as the text changes to your language before your very eyes. It doesn’t work flawlessly, but the overall effect is very impressive, and dare I say it, futuristic. 

Unlike the iOS version, the language packs in Word Lens for Android are all free. As of this review, the  languages available are Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, and Portuguese. There’s also a demo of the technology that shows you it works by reversing words and erasing words.

There is a dictionary within the application to look up words that the app fails to translate properly or if you just want to find a word’s definition quickly, without using the camera. This is great feature but the definitions that it provided were a hit or miss.

Great for foreign trips

Its translations are rarely 100% accurate, but nevertheless Word Lens is an impressive use of technology that will come in handy for trips abroad.

This program can no longer be downloaded. Take a look at instead.