Cool! Where Can I Get One?
Posted in August 17th, 2009 by Shannon SorensenImagine 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? 
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