Some time ago we published an article and a YouTube video about the PhotoTranslator application which we have developed. We were surprised of the attention it gained. Many people asked us, when will it be available and we have decided to release an alpha version of PhotoTranslator. So if you want to test it, you can install it directly from Maemo extras devel repository AT YOUR OWN RISK.
PhotoTranslator Alpha Features
As you probably have understood already, the PhotoTranslator is not a final version yet and it lacks features. It may, or it may not work as you expect, but as stated before, use it at your own risk. We also needed to remove bunch of languages from the application because they increased the package size to 95M. PhotoTranslator supports only the following languages from tesseract i.e. the languages that it can read from the images (OCR) at the moment:
- English
- Finnish
- German
- Spanish
- Portuguese
NOTE: This means that you can translate, but you can only use the OCR for the languages listed above. The workaround for this is that you can write the text manually and then translate it.
PhotoTranslator Beta Features
For beta version we are planning to implement the following set of features:
- Separate package for each supported language
- User can download different language packages via PhotoTranslator
- Disabled buttons for languages that are not installed
- Support for capturing images with PhotoTranslator
We are also investigating if we could open source the application at some point. More details will follow later.
Installing PhotoTranslator
The only thing you need to do is to enable extras-devel repository from your application manager. Check the details below.
In the Application Manager:
- Navigate to the application menu (tap the title bar)
- Select ‘Application catalogs’
- Select ‘New’
- Enter a catalog name of ‘Maemo extras-devel’
- Enter a web address of ‘http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel’
- Enter a distribution of ‘fremantle’
- Enter components of ‘free non-free’
- Select ‘Save’
Feedback
We would like to receive feedback of your user experience. You can give your feedback about PhotoTranslator in comment section. We will also later provide an email address, which you can use to send your feedback directly.
Thank you for reading our blog.
6 Comments
A great application! However, I can not upgrade to newest version due to the mismatched dependence of Qt. It requires libqt4-core (>= 4.6.2~git20100224-0maemo1+om5) . Beside extras-devel, what else of repository is required for phototranslator?
thx.
@benlau At the moment you need to wait for PR 1.2 release.
N900 runs on PR 1.1. The Qt libs for this version are 4.5.3. The autobuilder on the maemo site is linking PhotoTranslator with the PR1.2 ( Qt libs version 4.6.2 ).
So, because the application built on maemo garage is linked against libs which are newer then the ones that are already on the device the application can’t be installed. (It says missing dependences)
I hope we will get PR 1.2 soon.
Hi,
I’ve just loaded this app (0.1-11). I want to translate from Finnish to English. I take my photo, select it in the ‘select a picture’, adjust the region, press the ‘Language’ button and select Finnish so it says ‘Language: Finnish”, and press ‘Done’. It then looks like it is doing something with spinners, but then it comes up with :
“No text found from the photo select. Try changing the photo selection and check if the Language Dictionary was installed. (Settings/OCR Dictionary)”.
When I select “Settings/OCR Dictionaries”, I see two columns, “Installed Dictionary” and “Download Dictionary”. Both columns have ‘Finnish [2Mb]‘, but all the entries in the ‘Installed Dictionary” column are greyed out.
How to proceed?
Thanks.
Max.
PR 1.2 is out now, just installed teh USA version with hope sto install Photo Translator since after restoring a previous backup I had lost it due to the above mentioned reasons.
Unfortunately I can’t install it I get the following messages:
Nokia-N900:~# apt-get install libqt4-script
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libqt4-script: Depends: libqt4-dbus (= 4.5.3~git20090723-0maemo6+0m5) but 4.6.2~git20100401-0maemo1+0m5 is to be installed
Depends: libqt4-core (= 4.5.3~git20090723-0maemo6+0m5) but 4.6.2~git20100401-0maemo1+0m5 is to be installed
E: Broken packages
Sorry, posted what I got when trying for the broken dependencies, here is the result from pta
Nokia-N900:~# apt-get install phototranslator-alpha
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
phototranslator-alpha: Depends: libqt4-script (>= 4.5.3~git20090723-0maemo4+0m5) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages
@artemio & @davidmaxwaterman Thanks for your effort to test PhotoTranslator. We will investigate where the problem is and then we will get back to you.
We will write a new blog post about the current PhotoTranslator version and its improvements here.