Japan based mobile operator DOCOMO said on October 22, 2012, that it will be launching a real-time translation service. The new translation service will allow people to chat over the phone in many languages.
The subscribes will be able to get two-way voice-to-text readouts of conversations with the help of the new application. The translation service will come in handy for Japanese speaking people and those who talk in English, Korean or Chinese. The application is available for free and is known as the ‘Hanashite Honyaku’.
DOCOMO said that the new language translation application can be used on smartphones and tablet computers which run on the Android platform. One of the better features of the product is that customers can also make calls to land-line numbers with the new application.
The company spokesperson also said that the voice-to-text readouts will be available in French, Indonesian, German, Italian, Portuguese, Thai and Spanish. A spokesperson from DOCOMO said, “We hope that with this application, our subscribers will be able to widen the range of their communication”.
The spokesperson also added however, that the service does not offer perfect translations and faces some problems in deciphering certain dialects. Apart from the new translation service, DOCOMO has also launched a separate service which allows users to translate menus and signage using the smartphone’s camera.
