Mobile app translates Chinese character to English only by seeing images

This startup just closed $900,000 USD seed fund.

Waygo is an app that bills itself as changing the way expats, tourists, and business travelers experience foreign countries by breaking down language barriers.

Utilizing a combination of both Optical Character Recognition and a translation piece, Waygo currently translates Chinese characters into English text by seeing images, finding the relevant text, and finally creating sensible phrases.

Waygo does not require an internet connection to operate.

How it started?

According to Ryan Rogowski, CEO of Waygo, The idea for Waygo came about two years ago as Ryan was working in China building mobile games. He was in the process of learning Chinese and found it extremely difficult, especially for someone used to romance languages.

If only there were a tool that he could look up characters by simply pointing a phone camera at the text, his--and many others-- lives would become much easier. At first the idea was an educational tool, but eventually it grew in Ryan's head that this could help any traveler in any country see with new eyes.

"We decided to first focus on China and the East Asian market because that's where our team had the most experience and it was also the most difficult batch of languages to solve and we were up for the challenge! Our roots have provided a solid foundation and we are excited for what we have in the works--improvements and future app versions," he said.

What are recent developments?

WaygoApp.com has closed $900,000 USD in its seed
round of funding with 500 Startups, Goldengate Ventures, AngelVest, Gengo, Niket Desai, and Maneesh Arora participating in the round.

The funding will allow Waygo Translator to improve it’s Chinese to English translation app as well as expand to Japanese and Korean to English and release an Android version.

Ryan said: “I am excited about the opportunity ahead of us. We have an amazing team on board and a solid time frame to prove out our OCR and translation technology and build a tool that can change the world as we know it.”

"Companies that enter the field of OCR spend many years getting their solution to work, let alone be any good. We are no different, our team has been working on our inhouse, proprietary algorithms for close to a year and a half and it has paid off. When benchmarked against ABBYY (the top commercial OCR) our software is five times faster, two times more accurate, and a tenth of the file size."

_____

Name of the company: Waygo Translator
Founder/Founders: Ryan Rogowski (CEO), Kevin Clark (Director of Product) and
Huan-Yu Wu (Director of Technology)
Website: www.WaygoApp.com
Major Investors: 500 Startups, Goldengate Ventures, AngelVest, Gengo, Niket
Desai, and Maneesh Arora
Total funding at hand: $900,000 USD
Target fund: Seed round closed at $900,000 USD
Source of funding: Angel investors
Start of operation: June 2011

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