A Multi-lingual Friend in My Pocket: ABBYY

abby text grabber and translator

Communicating is always a challenge for frequent flyers, just like our 3DGuy, Al Caudullo! So discovering ABBYY’s TextGrabber + Translator app is is just like being with a multi-lingual travel companion! You no longer have to carry a pocket dictionary or a separate electronic translator. You’ve got all you need in one app.

And by the way, ABBYY is a “star”! Winner of SUPERSTAR Award in the “Text Input” category in the 2012 Mobile Star Awards, that is!

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To have ABBYY in our recent trip to Japan is a big deal. Great help! Especially at instances like this (see photo above), that even when the Japanese signs are translated in English already, it makes you want to think again and makes you hope for a far better translation that will relieve you! 😀

On short phrases, it recognized with about a 95% accuracy – which is a pretty incredible feat in itself considering there are over 4000 characters in the Japanese language compared to our paltry 40 odd in English (including symbols). It can even handle text in around 60 languages. I just really hope it does translates THAI language,too, as you know, I live/travel a lot in the “Land of Smiles”!

And yeah, food! ABBYY can surely help you figure out what to order.

It if the lighting is good and the text consistent, TextGrabber can actually handle a fairly significant block of full page English or European. If you are like me who loves sharing information, this is a perfect tool to snip articles out of magazines to give to friends!

Travel and social-wise, ABBYY is helping us here a lot. Here’s what they have to say about ABBYY in education and in business. Check out the video below:

Product Description:

TextGrabber + Translator easily extracts snippets of text from a variety of printed sources by using the device’s camera. You can digitize printed information and translate it into any of more than 40 languages anywhere anytime. Just take a picture of the text, and you can immediately edit and translate it, share via e-mail and SMS, or transfer it directly to other applications installed on your device – social networks, online storage services, etc. With TextGrabber + Translator you can scan and translate:

• Documents • Receipts • Notes • Articles • Book fragments • Manuals and instructions • Product ingredients, etc.

The app is easy to use and just right for it’s price. It may at times be not 100% reliable but, hey! If you know one, share here! 😀 As far as I have experienced, even the best search engine’s OCR program doesn’t give us a perfect translation at all. ABBYY is affordable, fast and a handy time-saver for anyone who likes to jot down a lot of notes on their iPhone, as it can grab text without the need for any typing at all.

 

 

 

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