# dmotz/thing-translator

📷 🗣  Point your camera at things to hear how to say them in a different language

Repository: https://github.com/dmotz/thing-translator
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/thing-translator
Homepage: https://thing-translator.appspot.com/
Language: JavaScript
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: ai-experiments, translator, language, javascript, camera, frontend, machine-learning, ml
Last push: 2021-03-23T02:35:05+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:39:23.370411+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3579, "days_push": 1990, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1329, forks 240 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:23.869847+00:00)

## What it is
Thing Translator is a web app that lets users point their phone or laptop camera at objects to hear how to say their names in a different language. It was built as part of Google's AI Experiments project using the Cloud Vision and Translate APIs.

## Use cases
- translate objects seen through a camera into another language
- learn how to pronounce names of things in a foreign language
- build a similar camera-based translation demo
- explore Google Cloud Vision and Translate API integration
- use machine learning APIs without deep ML knowledge

## When to choose
- you want a reference implementation combining Cloud Vision and Translate APIs
- you need a simple browser-based camera translation demo to fork or learn from

## When to avoid
- you need a production-ready, actively maintained translation tool
- you want offline or on-device translation without API keys
- you need support for modern ML models or long-term maintenance

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: abandoned
- function: machine-learning, image-processing, nlp, web-scraping
- domain: artificial-intelligence, machine-learning, web-development
- platform: browser
- tags: translator, camera, google-cloud-vision, google-translate, ai-experiment, creative-coding, localization, web-server, javascript

## Member repositories
- dmotz/thing-translator (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:23.869847+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:45:39.116364+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/dmotz/thing-translator (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:23.869847+00:00, sha 59eeb0e59154)
  - homepage: https://thing-translator.appspot.com/ (fetched 2026-08-29T12:05:06.052841+00:00, sha b0d4b732424d)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.