Imagine you're visiting Japan, can't read Japanese, and are trying to
get across town on a bus. It's impossible to understand what the maps
and station names say and it's even more confusing to look up the
characters in a language dictionary. Well, Google has created a possible
solution to this problem. The Web giant announced Wednesday that it was bringing its handwriting tool
to the Google Translate homepage. This means that when users see a word
or character they don't understand they can simply go to Google Translate, draw it on their smartphone or
tablet screen, and the program should be able to translate it.
"Handwriting input lets you translate a written expression, even if you
don't know how to type the characters," Google product manager Xiangye
Xiao wrote in a blog post.
"For example, suppose you see the Chinese expression '[the character in
the image above]' and want to know its meaning in English, but have no
idea how to type these characters. Using the new handwriting input tool,
you can simply draw these characters on your screen and instantly see
the translation."
source
cnet
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