This is straight out of Star Trek except that it is available now. Google Goggles for Android mobile platforms can translate text from photographs in English, Italian, French, German, and Spanish.
Use your cell phone to snap a photo of the desired text, and Goggles will translate it into your language. This eliminates the awkward practice of thumbing through a translation dictionary in restaurants or libraries. Instead, you can now take photos of the menu items, wait a few seconds, and Google Goggles will return the translation to you.
How about sitting in a library and looking at a PRINTED document about your ancestors, written in their native language? Google Goggles can translate any clear printed text but won't work on handwriting.
(Click on any image to see a larger picture.)
Here’s how it works:
- Point your phone at a word or phrase. Use the region of interest button to draw a box around specific words.
- Press the shutter button.
- If Goggles recognizes the text, it will give you the option to translate.
- Press the translate button to select the source and destination languages.
Goggles can read English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish and can translate to many more languages. Additional Latin-based languages will be supported in the future with non-Latin languages (such as Chinese, Hindi, and Arabic) on the drawing board for "someday."
Google Goggles v1.1 is available on devices running Android 1.6 and higher. Sorry folks, there is no iPhone version. Keep in mind that Android is the mobile operating system created by Google so it is no wonder that Google implemented on Android first.
You can learn more on the Google Mobile Blog at http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/05/translate-real-world-with-google.html and at http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles
