Aiming to break the language barriers, Japanese electronics company NEC has developed the first automatic translation software tailored for mobile phones.

Although the technology to translate Japanese to English exists a long time ago, this is the first time it's used in mobile phones without any external help.



It can recognize more than 50,000 japanese words and the translation process takes only seconds. However, Akihabara News pointed out, the software has a tremendous difficulty to translate some basic English words used in the everyday Japanese like for example "New York" or "Jet-lag".

The software is in still in the development stage and hopefully all these problems will be resolved before its public launch. NEC is also studying the possibility of vocal translation.

If you're looking for a decent translation device in your mobile phone, you can try Steape's talking translator for cellphones.

Via Wired

Photo from Akihabara News