CamTranslator is one of those Android apps that sort of makes you feel like you’re living in the future. It’s sort of a universal translator, which lets you point your phone’s camera at printed text in one language and translate words into another language.

The app currently supports more than 50 different languages ranging from English, French, Spanish and German to Korean, Russian, Afrikaans, and Persian.

CamTranslator can provide real-time translations of individual words, but it can take a moment or two for the camera to focus on a word well enough for the app to provide translation. You can also snap a photo of text which you can then translate one word at a time at a more leisurely pace. Unlike the recently launched Word Lens app for iOS, CamTranslator won’t even try to convert complete sentences or phrases.

Once you have your translation, you can look up the dictionary definition of a word, add it to your vocabulary list of words you’re trying to learn or remember, or share the translation via email, SMS, or other Android sharing apps.

There’s a free trial version of CamTranslator available for download from the Android Market. You can also buy a full license for $4.49 to remove ads and save unlimited vocabulary words.

Overall, I’m pretty impressed with the app as a tech demo. It does a good job translating a variety of English words in different fonts and the translations seem reasonably accurate. Of course, translating one word at a time could be a bit of a pain in the behind if you’re relying on this app to get directions or read a menu in a foreign restaurant. But nobody ever said living in the future would be easy… or did they?

You can check out my brief hands-on video showing CamTranslator in action after the break.

via Android Police


Brad Linder

Brad Linder is editor of Liliputing and Mobiputing. He's been tinkering with mobile tech for decades and writing about it since...