Swiping Action for Displaying a Translation of a Textual Image

• US 20140081620A1
• Filed: 09/18/2012
• Published: 03/20/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/18/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ABBYY Development LLC
• Original Assignee: ABBYY Software
• Inventors: Solntseva, Ekaterina
• Granted Patent: US 9,087,046 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04883 for inputting data by handwriting, e.g. gesture or text
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/40 Processing or translation of natural language natural language analysis G06F40/20; semantic analysis G06F40/30
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/58 Use of machine translation, e.g. for multi-lingual retrieval, for server-side translation for client devices or for real-time translation

Abstract

Disclosed is a method that involves acquiring an image with text, displaying all or a portion of the image on an electronic device. In response to detecting a swiping action or gesture, displaying a result of translation on a screen of the device. A first screen or display becomes a second one. Original text in a first language or source language may be easily and quickly compared to translated text shown on a second screen through a swiping gesture. Electronic dictionaries and machine translation may be used. These services may be independently stored and operated from different locations including on the device performing the translation, on a server or across a network (LAN, WAN, etc.). Optional manual correction of the translated text is also possible.

Claims

1. A method for displaying on a touch-sensitive display of an electronic device a translation of a text in a target language, the method comprising:

acquiring an image with text in a source language on the screen;

performing a swiping gesture on the screen;

translating the text;

displaying the translation of the text in the target language.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the acquiring the image with text may be performed with a camera of the electronic device.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the method further comprises recognizing the text after acquiring the image, and wherein the recognition and the translation are performed in response to pressing a button that triggers an action of the camera of the electronic device.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the acquiring the image with text may be performed from a memory storage of a device.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the swiping gesture includes detecting a contact with the touch-sensitive display and an associated touch movement for a distance along a direction on the touch-sensitive display.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the method includes performing an optical character recognition of the image with the text in the source language.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein said translating the text is performed programmatically directly after recognizing the text of the image.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the translation is performed after switching the screen by the swiping gesture in a forward direction.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein said translating the text includes a dictionary translation.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein said translating the text includes a machine translation.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises:

detecting an indication of a swiping gesture in a backward direction along the touch-sensitive display; and

displaying the representation of the initial image with text in the source language in response to said detecting the indication of the swiping gesture in the backward direction.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises manual correction of a translated text in the target language when the translation is displayed.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the correction of a translated text comprises:

detecting an indication of a touch on the touch-sensitive display;

identifying a portion of text of the translation corresponding to said indication of the touch;

displaying one or more alternative variants of translation in the target language corresponding to the identified portion of the translated text;

detecting an indication of a touch on the touch-sensitive display corresponding to one of the said alternative variants of translation in the target language; and

substituting said one of the alternative variants of translation for the identified portion of text in the displayed translation of the text in the target language.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the portion of text to be corrected in the translated text and alternative variants of translation are in a same language.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein displaying one or more alternative variants of translation comprises accessing a dictionary selected from the group consisting of a locally-stored dictionary and a remotely-stored dictionary.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein accessing the dictionary comprises performing a morphological analysis to identify a base form of the word.

17. The method of claim 13 further comprising displaying the plurality of translation alternatives as word forms consistent with a word form of the portion of the text to be corrected.

18. The method of claim 13, wherein the displaying of alternative variants of translation are represented in the form of one of a pop-up window a text balloon or a pulldown menu.

19. The method of claim 13, wherein the portion of text of the translation is a word.

20. The method of claim 13, wherein the portion of text of the translation is a word combination.

21. The method of claim 13, wherein the method further comprises providing a graphical user interface element that facilitates manual entry of text corresponding to a variant of translation that is not displayed in a list of alternative variants.

22. The method of claim 13, wherein the substituting one of the supposed by system alternative variants of translation comprises:

highlighting instances of variants of a same usage in the translated in the target language text; and

correcting instances of variants of the same usage in the translated text in the target language.

23. The method of claim 13, wherein the method further comprises:

after correcting the translation of the text in the target language, displaying an updated translation of the text in the target language;

detecting an indication of a swiping gesture in a backward direction; and

displaying an initial image with text in the source language.

24. The method of claim 11, wherein swiping in a forward direction and a backward direction may be performed repeatedly for comparing the source text with the translated text.

25. A method for displaying on a touch-sensitive display a translation of a text in a target language, the method comprising:

identifying a region of the image that includes text;

recognizing, via a recognition algorithm, the text of the region of the image;

translating the recognized text;

displaying a representation of the text in a source language;

detecting an indication of a swiping gesture in a first direction; and

displaying the translation of the text in the target language.

26. The method of claim 25, wherein the method further comprises:

detecting a second indication of a swiping gesture in a second direction along the touch-sensitive display; and

displaying the representation of the text in the source language in response to said detecting the second indication of the swiping gesture.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein the indication of the swiping gesture in the backward direction is of a type distinct from the first swiping gesture in the forward direction.

28. The method of claim 26, wherein the indication of the swiping gesture in the second direction corresponds to two points of contact with the touch-sensitive display.