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Q: What applications/software/phones/whatever allow you to scan characters?
I've seen people with iPads or even phones just holding them up in front of characters, which would scan the text and translate it instantly.
Anyone know which applications these are and which phones/companies provide this?
12 years 10 weeks ago in Web & Technology - China
I have a USA friend from Chicago who has an iPhone and downloaded this from a site into his phone at my apartment while visiting and he paid $ 15 US dollars for it, and it does work very nicely. He would aim the phone to the sign or article, bracket the characters he would like translated, press a button (or touch the screen), and the translation in Ennglish will show up.
He also had another one that he will speak a short sentence into the phone, press something again and the phone will enounce whatever he said in Mandarin. If I ever get an iPhone, I will have those two for sure.
My guess is that it will depend on what cell phone you have, once that is known try to Google for the available applications to download.
The phone Samsung Galaxy or an Iphone should have those types of scanners. I've seen people use them all the time. If your phone can connect to the internet you are likely to be able to get chinese characters added to your phone.
I believe happy is talking about the app "PLECO" on iPhone. Its free to download but for additional services like chracter recognition, you would have to upgrade it for $14.00, through the app.
subhash.sah:
iPod Touch with the camera, i.e. 4th generation onwards.
There are a couple I use. One is called Google Goggles (free) and works for more than just OCR. Pretty good, but in China, depending on the GFW's mood, getting results can take forever.
The other is a pay application called Pleco OCR. They have a whole suite of products aimed at learning Chinese that are considered the best by a lot of people.
For me, the Pleco product works better than Google's, but it is aimed at just Chinese OCR. So if you want other languages/features, then Google wins out.
