28 September 2008

The Way We Live Next:
Innovative Nokia's Shoot-To-Translate!

Here is another piece of invention which was demonstrated at Nokia's 'The Way We Live Next' Finland few days ago.

You see, we are mostly using our megapixel beasts for taking the photos what is indeed their main purpose but have you ever think about adding a more functionality to the Camera part? Using it on a bit different way?

Nokia certainly did with the latest breakthrough in mobile phone camera usage with the innovative Shoot to translate technology. It is actually software developed by Nokia and capable to translate written characters into another language text.

As you may have already know, Nokia Multiscanner today provides business card reading and document scanning and it coming as preinstalled application on the new Nokia E71 and Nokia E66 business phones, but in the near future, Nokia Multiscanner will become the translator in your pocket…

During your trips abroad, have you ever found yourself in a situation where you feel lost and uncertain due to a language barrier? Imagine you travel to China and are sitting in a restaurant in Beijing staring at a Chinese menu with no idea what the characters mean. Or you’re stood on a platform on Moscow’s underground trying to get your bearings – trying to work out where you are and to where you want to get to.

Soon these worries will belong to the past. By simply pointing your mobile at the text and taking a photo your Nokia Multiscanner will translate the text and display the text in your chosen language.

How does this work?

After you have taken the photo of the text you want to translate, your mobile identifies the text in the photo and then translates it for you. This process uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to recognize the text and then the application uses language libraries to finds the equivalent word in your language.

Language libraries are stored in the device and can be updated over the air (OTA) directly to the mobile. The language library for an alphabet language, for example English, French, or Greek, requires approximately 600 kilobytes; and for a character-based language, for example Chinese or Japanese, 3 megabytes is required.

*click to enlarge

Nokia’s working prototypes are already capable of translating text between 52 languages.

Nokia Multiscanner today

Nokia Multiscanner already provides business card reading and document scanning on the Nokia E66 and Nokia E71. So when someone gives you a business card you can effortlessly convert business card details and save them to your phone book. You simply take a photo and then Nokia Multiscanner converts the text from the business card into electronic data using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology - recognizing name, company, address, mobile number...

The same process can also be used to convert printed documents – perhaps you want to save the address of the restaurant that you’ve just read about in a magazine. You can easily capture the address from the magazine using Nokia Multiscanner and then save it as a note or send it to a friend by e-mail of text message.