the apps translate this menu item as "Corn Soup"
At CEATEC (Tokyo), DoCoMo was presenting a real-time translator app that is part of an “overseas vacation package” from the Japanese carrier. The goal of the package is to help travelers, and the most interesting application that I have seen is a real-time “menu translation” app that works in real-time: as the user visualizes a menu through the smartphone’s camera, the phone sends a portion of the image to a remote server for translation. There’s even an option to get extra information via Wikipedia if the user wants to know more about a particular term.The demo was pretty convincing and it shows a concept that should be very catchy – if it works in the field. In the past, such apps have not be practical enough to see mass adoption.
In the example above, the phone has translated the highlighted text to “Corn Soup” (as shown at the bottom of the screen). Now, if this could be extended beyond menus, that would be really cool. This application works only on Android as DoCoMo does not carry the iPhone…
Filed in . Read more about CEATEC, Ceatec 2011 and Docomo.