Google is improving its Google Translate service by integrating the technology developed by Quest Visual, developer of the camera-based translation app Word Lens.
Google, the world's largest internet search engine, is on an acquisition spree yet again and this time the web giant has snapped up the company behind the popular camera-based translation app Word Lens, Quest Visual. The announcement was made on the startup's homepage, Friday, confirming the integration of Word Lens technology into Google Translate.
"By joining Google, we can incorporate Quest Visual's technology into Google Translate's broad language coverage and translation capabilities in the future," the statement on the company's home page read. "As a thank you to everybody who supported us on our journey, we've made both the app and the language packs free to download for a limited time while we transition to Google."
The financial aspects of the deal were not disclosed.
The Word Lens app translates printed words by simple pointing a smartphone's camera on the sign or menu in foreign language. An image with the translated text will replace the text in the image. The company generated revenue by selling language packs. They also offered famous languages like Russian, Spanish, French, Italian German and more, for free. For a limited time, as the company transitions to Google, all languages are offered for free. The app is independent of a network connection for translation, but lacks few important features like recognizing handwriting or stylized fonts.
Since Google will incorporate the app's features into Google Translate, there will be no need for further upgrade as the web giant's translation app already supports handwriting recognition. Word Lens is available for Android, iOS devices and recently added support for Google Glass.
Text translation by taking a picture on Google Glass is already seen in Goggles app, but Quest Visual improves the translation methods by pointing the camera on the text.