Scanning Devices > Translating Scanners

A scanner must recognize every arrangement of pixels as a specific character. You're familiar with standard characters, which you're recognizing right now yourself. That's what a scanner does. Most Americans recognize the characters in the English alphabet, but get that deer in the headlights look when asked to recognize Arabic script or the 7500 characters Chinese Simplified (the Traditional version is much larger, believe it or not!). A scanning pen has these same issues. So some have a much larger internal database of characters to compare against what they scan. That is what recognition is about.

Translation starts with recognition, but does not stop there. You see each letter, and then you see some delimiter like a space or punctuation. Through education and years of practice, your mind has been trained to recognize that grouping of letters as a word. A scanning pen does this very thing. Now, let's say your translating scanner can translate from French to English. It recognizes the French characters, then recognizes a grouping of them as a word. At a space or punctuation mark, it starts this over again, saving up the words until you stop at the end of the line of text. Now it looks up each of those words in its internal database and provides the English equivalent to the screen.

The scanning pen processes this information via Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and performs other subsequent tasks so you can use that information more easily. In the case of a translating pen, those tasks are the translation steps outlined in the previous tab.

We sell these translating pens mostly to people who are studying abroad. For example, an exchange student spending a year in France. That person is conversant in French, but it's still a foreign language. A problem arises when the student comes across unfamiliar words when reading a required text. The translating scanner clears up the mystery.

• Researchers accessing foreign language texts.
• USA students studying abroad.
• Foreign students studying in the USA.
• Expatriates from the USA needing help in their new home.
• Immigrants to the USA needing help in their new home (we welcome you here!).
• Working with a foreign business partner, where documents are often untranslated from the other language.

A peripheral scanner typically connects to your computer, but some types connect to any Android device. The typical peripheral pen scanner has these features:

• Drag-free cord (if corded; obviously a Bluetooth model has no cord).
• No batteries required (if corded; obviously a Bluetooth model has no cord).
• Lightweight and compact.
• Easy setup and use.
• Handsome styling (not the old bulky plastic-looking gizmos of yesteryear).
• USB connectivity (pretty standard today), or even wireless.

The typical mobile scanner has these features:

• Cord-free.
• Long-life batteries (and most models will accept rechargeable, even if externally charged).
• Lightweight and compact.
• Easy setup and use.
• Handsome styling (not the old bulky plastic-looking gizmos of yesteryear).
• USB connectivity (pretty standard today), or even wireless.

1. Move your hand at a slow and steady speed. It helps to keep your wrist straight and just swing across the page with your arm. It's the same motion you need to highlight a line of text on a page using a yellow highlighter. So there is a technique to it, but you very likely have already mastered that technique.
2. If a paper starts to curl, roll it up in the direction opposite the curl then unroll it. You can also try dragging it gently across the edge of a desktop (just don't crease it).
3. If it's an important document, "frame" it the way photographers frame an important shot. But instead of adjusting the shutter speed, adjust your scanning speed. Do the first scan at your normal speed, then do one very slowly, then do one a bit slower than normal.
4. When saving the scan to your workstation, remember that you are saving a file. This is not any different from saving a paper file in a folder, except you're saving it electronically. So save to a smartly named folder and give it a meaningful filename. For example, Finance/BankStatements/2012/Statement2012-01-28. Don't use spaces in folder or filenames.
5. Keep your scanner away from smoke and dust. These can get on the lens or photoeye.