Have you ever been in a restaurant in a foreign country and were too shy to ask for help in translating the menu? Are you reading an actual, physical book, and would like to highlight a particularly long passage, but you're too lazy to write it down? A new Kickstarter project aims to be the solution to problems like these with the world's first pen scanner that can both digitize and translate the text for you if need be.
WorldPenScan X is a digital pen that you can use to scan documents and other "real world" materials and turn them into digital files. It is connected via Bluetooth to your device as soon as you turn it on and will immediately transmit the digitized material to your smartphone. But even cooler is that it will recognize foreign languages and then translate them for you (no need to painstakingly type it out on Google Translate). You will also be able to edit the digital text in several applications like MS Office apps, email apps and some browsers as well.
This pen will be really handy for those traveling to countries where English isn't the main form of written communication and those who are trying to learn another language. It supports Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong), English, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Vietnamese, among several other languages. The pen also recognizes barcodes and bank fonts as well.
Their Kickstarter campaign is just around $7,000 short of their target of $30,000, but they still have 16 days to go. If you believe in having a pen like this, you can head on over to their page and support their campaign. The target delivery date for backers will be April this year, and hopefully this will go out into the retail market some time after that.
SOURCE: Kickstarter