Docomo Shows Glasses That Translate Foreign Languages Right In Front Of Your Eyes

If Star Trek or Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy have the right of it, language will be a negligible barrier when fraternizing with aliens. But before worrying about extraterrestrial translators, it might behoove us to work on the terrestrial sort first—and Japanese telecommunications firm, NTT Docomo, is doing just that.

Using a pair of Vusix smart glasses at the annual Japanese electronics trade show, CEATEC, Docomo unveiled an app that translates written foreign languages and overlays the digital translation on real world documents.

Many of us are already familiar with the translation part. Google effortlessly translates words, phrases, and webpages. But lugging around your laptop while sightseeing in Tokyo isn’t exactly convenient.

The next most obvious solution would be something mobile, like a smartphone. But according to Docomo’s Shinji Kimura, “We’d already developed this augmented reality app for smartphones which translated text where you pointed your camera. But it felt really unnatural.”