ABBYY Launches FotoTranslate Application for Nokia® Smartphones
New Mobile Application Allows People to Translate Foreign Words On-The-Go by Simply Photographing Them with Smartphone Camera
ABBYY, a leading provider of document recognition, data capture and language software, today announced the availability of ABBYY FotoTranslate, its new application to instantly translate foreign words on Nokia smartphones by using a built-in camera and ABBYY’s mobile technologies. The new application is the first solution to combine ABBYY’s award-winning optical character recognition (OCR) technology for converting images of words into text and mobile dictionary software. As a result, FotoTranslate delivers swift and accurate translation of words without the need for manual input, an Internet connection, cellular signal, or access to any external language resources.
“Our new product helps users of Nokia devices to easily understand the meaning of words and phrases written in a foreign, even completely unknown language,” explained Katya Solntseva, director of Mobile Products Department at ABBYY. “It will make people feel more confident in various communication situations especially when traveling abroad.”
ABBYY FotoTranslate becomes a useful assistant every time when instant translation is needed — it will help to translate within seconds a dish name in a restaurant menu, unknown words in a local newspaper, on a building or guide sign. When a photo of the text is taken, the application automatically recognizes every word on the image, and then it looks the selected words in the dictionary database and shows the translations on the phone screen word by word. If some part of the photographed word is out of the picture, FotoTranslate will automatically offer a range of variants with similar spelling to choose from. Guiding tips on the smartphone screen make the application even more straightforward and user-friendly.
The application provides high-quality and up-to-date dictionary content from leading publishers such as Collins and Oxford and delivers powerful word look-up capabilities. It supports 8 popular European languages (English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian) and translates words in 30 directions in total. In addition, ABBYY FotoTranslate offers audio pronunciations recorded for ABBYY by professional speakers.
The product is based on ABBYY Mobile OCR Engine, an award-winning software development kit (SDK) for creating compact OCR applications for mobile devices and PC. The SDK provides intelligent OCR technology that converts images of printed text into editable and searchable files. It also corrects distortions typical for photos of text and makes them suitable for accurate recognition and processing.
System Requirements and Specifications
Supported devices: Nokia smartphones.
User interface: available in English, German and Russian.
Operating systems: Symbian® OS S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition (v9.1/9.2/9.3/9.4).
Memory requirements: 10 – 250 MB to store dictionary files (main memory or memory cards), 30 – 250 MB to store audio files (main memory or memory cards).
Camera requirements: 2 mega pixels or more with autofocus.
Internet connection is required for product activation.
Availability
ABBYY FotoTranslate is available in various single-direction versions (for example, English-Italian, German-French, Russian-Polish, etc.) and multilingual versions that include different sets of languages with English, German or Russian as the target language of translation. It will be sold via the online store at http://www.abbyy.com/ and through ABBYY’s partners worldwide allowing users to choose a time-limited or full license to run the application.
Audio files with word pronunciations for any supported language can be downloaded at the ABBYY Web site free of charge. A free trial version is also available for download.