Google Translate Live Offline Chinese OCR

[mikelove]

Google Translate just added "Word Lens"-style live offline Chinese OCR support to their iOS app. Here's a screenshot of the front page of Chinese Wikipedia:

 

 

Strangely enough not out on Android yet, but I'm sure it will be shortly. And since it's offline it should be usable even in China.

 

To be honest I've been anticipating this for 6 years now (Word Lens' original Spanish app having come out just a few months after Pleco's live OCR did); if anything I'm surprised it took this long. Not something I'm particularly worried about as a business threat - frankly we'd be fine even if our OCR sales dropped to zero - but it does help to clarify the focus for our own future OCR improvements.

[markcarter]

I've also been keeping an eye on this (because of Hanping Camera) and also do not think it's a business threat, because that Google Translate feature has got a very different target audience and use case. Not worried at all!

[mikelove]

Actually your app provides a reassuring precedent here, since despite its impressive sales numbers (must be close to 10k now, right?) its launch didn't seem to affect our Android OCR revenues in the slightest :-)

[markcarter]

That's good to know! It could be partly because Hanping Camera works quite differently.

 

Similarly, I can confirm that Hanping Popup sales weren't affected when you released Screen OCR (which uses the same technology as Hanping Popup), but considering that only targeted Lollipop (and above) the potential customers were quite small then so it's hard to tell.

 

I sincerely like to see others do well in this industry which is why I recently backed Outlier and Ninchanese (both excellent) even though I don't have a need (personal or professional) for either.

[mikelove]

Our free Screen Reader feature only requires Jelly Bean, so most of the people using that wouldn't have been able to download your app anyway. :-)

[markcarter]

I'm talking about "Screen OCR" not "Screen Reader". Your "Screen Reader" feature doesn't use any OCR at all, whereas your "Screen OCR" uses the same technology (Media Projection APIs introduced in Lollipop) I used for Hanping Popup. Interesting fact: Hanping Chinese Popup was the world's first app to combine OCR technology and in-app screen recording

[bingunginter]

By the way, in the new updated google translate app, do they remove the pinyin ? It wasn't showing anymore for me when triggered from chrome context menu or the tap to translate.

[mikelove]

Still showing for me at least - this is on Android, right? Comes up right below the Chinese characters in gray.

[bingunginter]

yes android, it showing for me when its triggered from the main app, but not from 'tap to translate' or chrome context menu.

https://goo.gl/photos/cj97ofPXf3rhJ1dy9

[mikelove]

That's odd - what's your current device model + Android version? Marshmallow with its "Translate" text selection context menu? (you're not on the Android N preview by any chance, are you?)

[mikelove]

Out on Android too now. Configuration UI is a bit buggy, though, you have to go into the sidebar menu and manually download the Chinese translation pack for offline use before the icon for Word Lens will appear. Also seems to be noticeably laggier than the iOS version, though I only had a 32-bit Android phone handy to test with - might be better in 64-bit.

[Mati1]

I've just discovered the Google Translate app for OCR translations.

Useful for images (can't dump an image into the Google translate webpage) and of course for stuff not on a computer.

However, I don't know if Pinyin can be shown as well and it doesn't like my handwriting