{"id":12052,"date":"2013-01-28T13:30:42","date_gmt":"2013-01-28T18:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/systems\/?p=12052"},"modified":"2022-01-24T20:56:37","modified_gmt":"2022-01-25T01:56:37","slug":"no-longer-lost-in-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/no-longer-lost-in-translation\/","title":{"rendered":"No Longer Lost in Translation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"At<\/a>
At the Global Mobile Internet Conference, Waygo took top honors in the appAttack contest. Pictured from left are Huan-Yu Wu, Robert Sanchez, Alejandro Campos Carl\u00e9s of StartMeApp, and Ryan Rogowski at the award ceremony.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just two years ago, American Ryan Rogowski found himself living and working in China building mobile games. He had never spoken Chinese before and learning the language proved to be quite difficult. If only a tool existed that allowed you to look up characters on a phone simply by pointing your camera at the text, Rogowski thought.<\/p>\n

Enter Huan-Yu Wu (MS \u201910) who is helping make that dream a reality. Rogowski met Wu shortly after he returned to the U.S. He encouraged Wu to help with his idea by joining Translate Abroad, a small startup company. \u201cI had a passion for image processing, and he was looking for teammates to build the app,\u201d said Wu. \u201cWe soon realized the potential of our project, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today the free app is better known as Waygo<\/a>,<\/strong> a name chosen because of the similar pronunciation of the Chinese word, \u5916\u56fd, which means foreign country. Wu has been instrumental in the development of the app\u2019s image capture and analysis features. Waygo is able to instantly translate Chinese to English via an iPhone, but other languages like Japanese and Korean, as well as English to Chinese translations, are in the works.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe decided to first focus on China and the East Asian market because that\u2019s where our team had the most experience,\u201d said Wu. \u201cThese countries also use some of the more difficult languages to translate but we\u2019re up for the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wu\u2019s familiar with tackling new research. At Boston University, he studied under Professor Janusz Konrad<\/strong><\/a> (ECE) and Associate Professor Prakash Ishwar<\/strong><\/a> (ECE) in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Both professors pushed him to learn more about image processing during his small classes and master\u2019s project. \u201cIt was easy to interact with my professors so I was able to get the most out of studying here,\u201d said Wu. \u201cAlso, Boston\u2019s easy access to resources makes it one of my favorite cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ishwar, who with Konrad was one of Wu\u2019s co-advisors, recalls that his former student was difficult to read initially thanks to his soft-spoken nature. \u201cIn your first meeting with Huan-Yu, you may not grasp his steely determination to succeed, hard work, perseverance, and sharp intellect lurking under his quiet and unassuming nature,\u201d said Ishwar, \u201cbut if you give him a chance and wait to see the quality and quantity of his work output, you will be pleasantly surprised to find out how wrong you were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wu decided to attend BU after browsing through some websites and discovering the ECE Department\u2019s strong group in signal processing. \u201cThis was what I had wanted to learn, and after I came here to study, I was really glad I made the right choice,\u201d said Wu.<\/p>\n

\"As
As a student at Boston University, Huan-Yu Wu gained a greater understanding of image processing by working with Professor Janusz Konrad (ECE) and Associate Professor Prakash Ishwar (ECE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By working with Ishwar and Konrad, Wu gained a greater understanding of image processing \u2013 information he uses every day at Translate Abroad where he works on the algorithms and back end of the app. His counterparts \u2013 Rogowski, the CEO, and Kevin Clark, who works on the mobile and front-end aspects of the product \u2013 also possess backgrounds in image processing research.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be more productive, we divided our work and supported each other on our assignments,\u201d said Wu. \u201cRyan focuses on the business side, Kevin designs mobile interface, and I develop the recognition and translation algorithm.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recently, Waygo added a fourth member, Robert Sanchez, who helps in marketing and business operations. All four are working from Providence, R.I., though the company now additionally has ties to Mountain View, Calif., after recently joining the startup accelerator program, 500 Startups.<\/p>\n

Their company may be in its early stages still but it\u2019s already received praise for Waygo at the Global Mobile Internet Conference \u2013 Silicon Valley last October. The app, then known as Waigo Translate, took home top honors and beat over 200 competitors in the event\u2019s appAttack contest. For their design, the Waygo team was awarded $5,000.
\n\u201cThe conference turned out to be a wonderful platform for keeping up-to-date with new technologies and connecting with great people,\u201d said Wu. \u201cThere were a number of people present who travel back and forth between the U.S. and China, so it was a good opportunity to build traction with our app,\u201d said Wu.<\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019re traveling to China soon or simply want to have a better understanding of the menu the next time you\u2019re at a Chinese restaurant, Waygo is worth trying out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just two years ago, American Ryan Rogowski found himself living and working in China building mobile games. He had never spoken Chinese before and learning the language proved to be quite difficult. If only a tool existed that allowed you to look up characters on a phone simply by pointing your camera at the text, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1500,"featured_media":35468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[127,205],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12052"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1500"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12052"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35469,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12052\/revisions\/35469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}