Japanese mobile giant NTT DoCoMo has announced plans to introduce an automatic voice translation service for Android smartphones and tablets.
The service, called Hanashite Hon’yaku, will debut on November 1 as “the world’s first commercial mobile service for translation of conversations between people speaking Japanese and other languages”, DoCoMo said in a statement.
The new service, which uses DoCoMo’s cloud for processing, currently translates between Japanese and English, Chinese or Korean. Starting late November, other languages will be added, including French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai.
With the app, mobile users will be able to see the translated text on either screen text or voice readouts. The app also can be used in face-to-face conversations for translation, in which the two speakers share one smartphone.
The Hanashite Hon’yaku app will be free for download, working with Android smartphones and tablets that run on Android 2.2 (Froyo) or later.
Meanwhile, DoCoMo has also announced the availability of another application which aims at helping foreigners visiting Japan.
Called ‘Utsushite Honyaku’ (AR translator with word recognition camera), this app translates short text between Japanese and either English, Chinese or Korean. The app will translate words and phrases not only in menus, but also street signs and signboards, DoCoMo said.
DoCoMo will launch the “Utsushite Honyaku’ service on October 11, and trialing the service in Japan until end of October.
This app will be available free for download. Usage will not incur any transmission fee since the translation process does not require network connection. It can be used on any smartphone or tablet equipped with an outer camera and running Android 2.3 or later, DoCoMo added.