I got to download the app called "Google Translate" and had the chance to play around with it. It was quite fun and amusing. I'm definitely interested in the mechanics behind everything. Even though the app isn't perfect, it was my first time seeing something like this in action. 

         Some pros I have in mind: It is much more convenient than carrying around a dictionary to manually translate every word in order to fully understand the sentence. Having to do that will take much longer than just having to take a picture of it, then have it translated within seconds. Plus, the app also audio for alot of langues; thus, letting you or the other person listen. Another pro I figure is that the app let you download the language package for offline usage.

        Some cons I found while using this app are that it depends completely on having a good camera phone ( or at least have a good picture of the sentence to translate), having a stable recording hand and knowing beforehand the language to translate into. As you can see from my first 2 picture, it was a picture of a moving truck on the highway near UIC Halsted Blue Line. Since the truck was moving, I wasn't able to capture a good quality photograph of it;thus, giving the app a hard time to figure out the sentence. Plus, from the truck picture, I was not aware of what language it was. So the app did not correctly translate that into English.

     Another thing with Augmented Reality is that it requires you to have a stable recording hand in order for it to successfully augment the photo for an instant translation. Right now on your smartphone it allows you to have a lens that you can move over the real world and see it modified on the phone's screen, but what if you were running this in a future AR pair of glasses or contact lenses, and it was automatically translating everything it sees to the language of your choice and hiding the original text from real world. I could see that happening in the future, but it would require a much more sophisticated camera on the AR pair of glasses in order for the user to completely immerse into the AR world. 

    Plus, the software used to modify the screen need to be better made and improved greatly as with just a slight movement on the camera, the modified translated text disappeared, bringing back the original text.  In my opinion, the user of these glasses should have complete control of he/she viewing. Perhaps the user can have the choice of viewing between translated modified text  or the original text.