Dubai-based airline Emirates is behind an amazing new Apple iPhone application which acts as a translation tool by taking a picture of the handset users mouth and then animates it to produce a range of handy phrases.
Built by Lean Mean Fighting Machine in London to translate English into French, German and Arabic, the app is a bit rough around the edges and tricky to set up initially – but it works.
Here is a demo video.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA5CMtQDyP4&
The app works by digitising the picture and by then working out where the corners of the mouth and lip line are located.
Users can then select topic areas such airport, inflight, taxi, hotel, sightseeing and shopping and choose a phrase – “Could I have an aisle seat”, “Could we leave our baggage here?”, “Could you rub some suncream into my back?” etc – to animate and reproduce with audio using their lips.
Clever, funny and probably useful.
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About Kevin May
Great–what’s the the app called??????
Rudy:
It’s called iLingual and is available on the app store;
http://tiny.cc/ilingualapp
Well, I think it would work as a nice ice breaker when trying to pick up foreign girls. So to answer your question, yes it is the most useful travel app.
I could definitely use this to make up for my appalling French.
Turbcast is a great travel app for fearful fliers, or regular travelers curious about turbulence.