Vodafone Offers Japanese to Chinese Translation

Vodafone Japan has added a new function to its MMS service for 3G handsets which displays mails written in foreign languages. At the time of launch on 3 April 2006, customers will be able to send mails in Japanese to China Mobile and China Unicom customers, and also receive mails written in Chinese from customers using these same operators. Vodafone K.K. plans to expand this capability to more countries and regions that use non-English languages.

As of 8 March 2006, mails can be exchanged with customers using the mobile handsets of 34 participating operators in 23 countries and regions.

With the current Global MMS service, mails received from customers using operators abroad may not display properly if they include characters that are not half-width alphanumeric English characters. This happens because Vodafone K.K. 3G handsets in general do not support languages outside Japanese and English. The new function, however, automatically converts text portions into images, which then get attached to incoming or outgoing mails. This makes it possible for Vodafone K.K. 3G customers to send Japanese language mails abroad and customers abroad to send foreign language mails to Vodafone K.K. 3G customers.

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Posted to the site on 9th March 2006