Framework based on Mobile Augmented Reality for Translating Food Menu in Thai Language to Malay Language

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) technology is a technique that combines the real world and the virtual world digitally using mobile devices. Mobile AR technology is expected to help Malaysian tourists who have difficulties to understand the Thai language when visiting the country. Hence, a prototype called ARThaiMalay  translator was developed to translate printed Thai food menu to Malay language. The objective of this study is to design a food menu translation framework from Thai to Malay language based on mobile AR, develop a translator application and to test the effectiveness of the translator application. The prototype consists of three main components which are translation based on optical character recognition (OCR) technology, dictionary development using SQLite database  and display data from the local database. Evaluation of the developed application shows its effectiveness to perform translation of Thai text with certain features to Malay language.