December 13, 2007
The mobile phone that translates foreign menus into English
The days of restaurant humiliation for linguistically-challenged Britons will soon be over, reports the Daily Mail, thanks to Nokia which has developed a mobile phone application which scans a menu and automatically translates thousands of food-related words in seconds.
"To use the software, the diner simply takes a picture of the part of the menu he or she wants to translate.
The phone comes back with an English translation within seconds.
The software is a version of barcode reading applications which are already found on many mobiles.
The prototype application is able to scan and translate 9,000 Chinese words and 600 Japanese words.
Other languages - such as Korean, French, Italian and Polish - are expected to follow soon.
The software is likely to be added to one of Nokia's top-of-the-range camera phones such as the N95.
[via The Daily Mail]
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