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Imagine being able to read every sign in every country in every language. No more trying to decipher if means men’s or women’s bathroom or if “Animelles de mouton frites” is in fact something that you would like to eat.

Thanks to the team of engineers at Germany’s Karlsruhe University, this technology is slowly becoming available. They have developed a handheld device called the Sign Translator. This device uses recognition technology to detect signs in nature and then translate from the source to the target language. It detects signs initially by its edges and color. Then it detects characters within the parameters of the sign. A program within the device then translates the text.

One example of this in action is Nokia’s proposal to possibly launch Shoot-to-Translate (although they won’t say if and when), a camera phone with a text translator embedded inside. This translation software app allows users to take a picture of text and then the cell phone will translate the text for you.

Currently the “shoot and translate” app exists and is being sold as a separate application that can be added to your mobile camera phone. The application is a product of Linguatec, a language technology company that has launched a mobile version of its automatic text translator software. Shoot and Translate uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) features and is only compatible with Nokia phones at the moment (Do we see a partnership in the near future?). It is very new so there aren’t many reviews regarding the application’s ability to function well or not. So far it is available in the following language pairs:

I am sure in the near future we will start to see more and more mobile devices available with this new technology. Just another step in globalizing this little planet that we live on.

Who knows by the time I take a vacation to Korea, I won’t be duped into trying , the Korean the national dish?

Rosiane’s last post left my academic soul restless.

This blog gives us a good opportunity to exchange ideas and for you, the reader, to know better what is going on in our minds. As a translation student at PUC-Rio, I could not pass up the opportunity to add to Rose’s discussion. Did you know that in our program we have a course called Translation Theory? Not to mention the Theories of Meaning course that I still have not taken.

I agree with the premise meaning is in constant production. Although many times the words are waiting to be translated, meaning is not concretely stuck to one idea—although they are arbitrarily agreed upon. It is up to us, as translators to interpret and give new meaning to speech and to find those that accept the ideas we are trying to convey.

Recently, a colleague of mine asked how to say abraço in English. To give a quick answer, I said that it was “hug.” But we have to keep in mind that language was not born from a translation project and as such, one word is not tied to another in regards to its meaning. For example, Brazilian culture allows us to end conversations with “beijos e abraços,” but in English it is not customary to bid farewell by saying “kisses” or “hugs.”

Like Rose said: the word “saudade” does not have an equivalent in other languages. If we think about it, IN PRINCIPLE, no word has an exact equivalent meaning in another language. It is the cultures and contexts that more or less define the sphere of meaning.

In European Portuguese, the word “rato” (meaning a computer mouse), represents more than a simple object; it represents an adverse linguistic attitude towards foreign expressions. And so it is and as so I will follow… This notion of constant production and interpretation of meaning is where my loyalty resides.

How do your ideas contribute to mine and Rosiane’s? Any volunteers for Part 3 of this discussion?