Would you believe me if I told you that there is an app that can provide you with translations of words and sentences almost instantaneously? I recently discovered one named Worldictionary which does just that and all it requires is your iPhone’s camera to work its magic.
What is the app about?
Worldictionary is an iPhone app that helps in finding the meaning and translation of words in your own language. It can recognize and translate words between multiple languages like Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, French, German etc. The app uses OCR (Optimal Character Recognition) technology to recognize words.
Working of the app:
Worldictionary works in a very simple manner. All you have to do is point the camera to the word; the app recognizes it right away and shows you the translation. You can choose the language that you need, using the settings option. You are provided with online and offline dictionaries. The online dictionary provides you with translations in different languages whereas the offline dictionary offers Chinese Traditional and Chinese Specified.
When you point to a word, there is an option to expand your search on Google, Wikipedia and YouTube. You can also use an image from your iPhone gallery or take a snap of a word and get the translation. When you need to know the translation of a sentence, just take a snap of it, select the sentence, tap ‘recognize’ followed by ‘translate’ and you will get the translated sentence. Yet another interesting feature of the app is that you can also listen to the translation of words, to know how they have to be pronounced. Worldictionary automatically saves your search records for later use. You also have the option of bookmarking your searches. The app also allows you to share your search with your friends through email and SMS, which is a really cool aspect.
Worldictionary provides a very good step by step tutorial which helps users get a clear understanding of the app and its working. Users have an option to purchase languages for the offline dictionary.
Worldictionary is very useful while traveling abroad where you are likely to face problems with foreign languages. The only thing which I noticed while using this app is that you have to be connected to the network all the time, which is not always possible. Otherwise, it is an excellent app which helps in translating words instantly.
Worldictionary costs $3.99 and requires iOS 4.2 or later versions.
