The following is an insert from Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer, for Smart phones may one day be translators article, published on February 28, 2010:

In science fiction, characters often turn to a portable universal translator to help bridge the linguistic divide, either among humans or with aliens.

But the concept doesn’t just exist in the imagination of “Star Trek” writers or the pages of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Researchers are actually closing in on the technology and foresee its application in the coming years in a very familiar device: the smart phone.

Imagine walking into a restaurant in Beijing and ordering off the menu and talking with waiters in Chinese. It’s a future that is on the way to becoming a reality.

Google, which is at the forefront of this consumer application, talked of its progress this month in bringing near real-time translation, both voice and text, to a smart phone. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Google CEO Eric Schmidt showed off a smart-phone feature that allows a user to take a picture of German text and have it quickly translated into English using optical character recognition software and Google Translate technology.

Read more to learn more: Smart phones may one day be translators >>

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