Currently mobile users engage the services of a third party provider to translate an SMS text into a different language. The existing services have a number of drawbacks e.g. high cost to the user, not user friendly, they reduce the message space, and are inefficient. To communicate with a foreign person the sender must know the recipients preferred language and device display capability. What is needed is a service where a sender can send message in their native language without regard for the target tongue. Using an open source language translation package and a database server we show that a mobile operator can provide a transparent service where the text message is automatically converted to the recipients preferred language. We show that in comparison to the existing system our implementation is efficient and cost effective and has large implications for commerce, language learning and person-to-person communication.
Swadesh Kumar Samanta, A. Achilleos, Sandro Moiron