If you’ve ever found yourself in some foreign restaurant with a dish in front of you that looks decidedly like something you’d rather not eat and certainly wouldn’t have ordered if you had understood the menu, Google has an answer.
Andrew Gomez, Google’s product marketing manager, said: “Imagine being in a foreign country staring at a restaurant menu you can’t understand, a waiter impatiently tapping his foot at your table side.
“You, a vegetarian, have no idea whether you’re about to order spaghetti with meatballs or veggie pesto. What would you do?”
No, you don’t have to take out your laptop, locate a Wi-Fi hot spot and laboriously type the menu text into translation software; the answer is a whole lot more ingenious than that.
“Well eventually you might be able to take out your mobile phone, snap a photo with Google Goggles, and instantly view that menu translated into your language” says Gomez.
Google have been demonstrating a prototype of Google Goggles at the Mobile World Congress which does just that. It translates text that has been captured in a photograph. Cool or what eh?
Think about it, you would no longer have to worry about being served up goat’s eyeballs, monkey brains or some other disgusting concoction all because of a lack of language skills.
“It’s still in an extremely early stage, but we thought we’d share this demo with you because it shows just how powerful a SmartPhone can be when it’s connected to our translation technologies” said Gomez in a blog.
At the moment the technology only works for German to English translations, however, Google Scientist Hartmut Neven says on the Google translate blog that this is just the beginning.
“It shows a lot of promise for what the future might hold” he said.
“Soon your phone will be able to translate signs, posters and other foreign text instantly into your language.
“Eventually, we’re hoping to build a version of Google Goggles that can translate between all of the 52 languages currently supported by Google Translate – bringing even more information to you on the go.
If you’re wondering if the technology will work on your phone when it eventually becomes available, Google Goggles is compatible with any SmartPhone that is running with Android 1.6+ operating system.
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