Abstract:
A computer method and an electronic device enable a user to lookup words and insert new words in a text based on the results of the look up. The method executed by the device includes: providing a user with a capability to select at least one word in a text displayed on the screen of the device; performing a dictionary lookup of the identified word so as to determine translation alternatives of the identified word; displaying at least some of the translation alternatives; selecting one of the displayed alternatives; determining its word forms, wherein the word forms consist of gender, number, grammatical tense and grammatical variations of the same word; selecting one of the word forms; and inserting the selected word from in the text.

Description:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
     This application is a Continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/006,813 filed on Jan. 14, 2011 which claims the benefit of priority to U.S. Patent Application No. 61/294,947 filed on Jan. 14, 2010. The disclosures of the above applications are incorporated herein by reference to the extent that such disclosures are not inconsistent with this application. 
    
    
     FIELD 
     The present disclosure is directed towards looking up words on a display screen and inserting translated words or word combination in a text. 
     BACKGROUND 
     Electronic dictionaries are used to look up individual words and word combinations by users who are reading printed texts or texts displayed on a computer screen. Users may interact with electronic dictionaries in different ways. 
     There are a plethora of electronic devices with display screens capable of displaying text. These devices are suitable for using electronic dictionaries which may be installed locally, i.e. on the user&#39;s computer or portable device (such as smartphones, PDAs, cell phones, digital photo or video cameras, e-book readers, and other gadgets), provided on a local area network, or available over the Internet. 
     Many of the aforesaid devices include advanced displays and associated logic capable of supporting non-keyboard input methods. For example the devices may support pen-based input, or touch-based input. 
     Many devices, for example, mobile phones, smartphones, pad tablets, or e-books, have small screens, which do not allow a user to open several windows and simultaneously use several applications without frequently switching between them. A small screen makes a text translation process difficult and there is a need to integrate a dictionary with a portable device such that a user may conveniently perform text translation on a small screen. 
     SUMMARY 
     The disclosed method and system displays meanings and translations of words and word combinations using electronic dictionaries and enables a user to select and insert an acceptable translation in a text. 
     In one embodiment, the method comprises: touching a touch screen of an electronic device with a finger, a stylus, or any other suitable object, or aiming a cursor on a word; establishing coordinates of the touch or the cursor location; identifying a word or a word combination chosen by the user; looking up the identified word or the word combination in a dictionary; displaying an abridged version of a relevant dictionary entry, for example, in a balloon or in a pop-up window on the screen of the electronic device; providing a choice to a user of several proposed alternatives of translation including a selection of word forms (such as gender, number, grammatical tense, and other grammatical variations of a word); and inserting a selected alternative of the translation of a word or word combination in the text. While the description refers to translation and provides examples of translation from one language to another, it should be noted that the present disclosure is equally applicable to word look-ups and replacements in the same language. In addition to the foreign language translation, the “translation” words include replacement words in the same language, for example, synonyms. 
     Electronic dictionaries may comprise a software program and dictionary data. The program may include a shell, which provides a graphical user interface, morphology models to provide inflected forms, context search that uses an index, a teaching module, and other features. The dictionaries may be stored in various locations including on the computer device, such a portable device, or on a server in a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), such as the Internet. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  shows an example of displaying a dictionary entry of a word touched by a user on a touch screen of an electronic device. 
         FIG. 2  shows a flowchart of operations performed by dictionary software during translation of an indicated word or word combination. 
         FIG. 3A  shows an example of displaying alternative translations of a word touched/clicked by a user on a screen of an electronic device. 
         FIG. 3B  shows an example of displaying relevant word forms of a chosen alternative of a translation. 
         FIG. 4  shows a flowchart of operations performed by dictionary software in connection with inserting a translated word or word combination in the displayed text. 
         FIG. 5A  shows an example of choosing an acceptable word form by touching/clicking it. 
         FIG. 5B  shows a result of an insertion of translated word in the text. 
         FIG. 6  shows exemplary architecture for implementing the electronic device. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     The disclosed electronic device allows a user to quickly obtain meanings and translations of words displayed as part of a text from electronic dictionaries and to insert an acceptable alternative of translation of such a word or word combination in the text while reading or translating the text on a display screen of the electronic device. The meanings and translations may be displayed in a balloon, in a pop-up window, as subscript, as superscript, or in any other suitable manner, when the user touches a word on the display screen or aims a cursor at a word. 
     The disclosed device displays word translations on a screen of an electronic device.  FIG. 1  of the drawings illustrates an example of an electronic device  102 , comprising a display screen  104 . The content presented on the display screen or touch screen  104  may be outputted by an application (e.g., Word, Notepad, Adobe, e-book reader, a Web Browser, e-mail, a text message, image display, or another appropriate application) that provides text to the display screen  104 . When the user touches an area on the display screen  104  with a finger, a stylus or with any other suitable object and there is a word or word combination in the area, a balloon with a translation appears displaying an abridged version of the relevant dictionary entry. 
     The Italian text of  FIG. 1  states the following: “Florence is situated in a scenic location: the center of a large amphitheater, surrounded on three sides by the beautiful hills of clay Cercina, slightly above the popular district of Rifredi and Careggi Hospital (in the north), by the hills of Fiesole (in the northeast), Settignano (in the east), and Arcetri, Poggio Imperiale, Bellosguardo (in the south). The plain, where the city towers up, is crossed by the Arno (the city itself is divided by it between Upper Valdarno and Lower Valdarno) and by smaller rivers such as the Mugnone, Terzolle and by the river Greve. Metropolis of Florence—Prato—Pistoia, established by the Regional Council of Tuscany on 29 Mar. 2000, is a very populated, with a population of about 1,500,000 inhabitants, and includes entirely the provinces of Florence, Prato and Pistoia.” 
     The electronic device  102  may comprise a computer system, such as a general purpose computer, embodied in different configurations such as a desktop personal computer (PC), laptop computer, smartphone, cell phone, digital camera, or another gadget having a display screen.  FIG. 6  of the drawings shows exemplary hardware and system architecture for implementing electronic device  102  in accordance with one embodiment. 
     Electronic device  102  may include a client dictionary application and one or more local dictionaries. Additionally or alternatively to a local dictionary, the application may be able to access one or more remote dictionaries located on a remote server via network connection to the server, e.g. over the Internet. 
     To look up words and word combinations that appear in non-text files, for example in JPG, TIFF or PDF files, the user&#39;s electronic device may include additional Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software which identifies the region on the image where the word or word combination is located and then converts the image in the region into a text format. Optical Character Recognition may also be performed using a remote server, which receives an image and an identified area from the device, applies OCR processing so as to ascertain the word or words at issue, and returns the recognized word or words to the device. The remote server may be accessible via a data path that includes a wireless data path, internet connection, Bluetooth, etc. 
       FIG. 2  shows a flowchart of operations performed by the device in connection with the dictionary application. When the user reads a text on the display screen  104  of the electronic device  102  and wishes to look up a word or word combination, the user simply points to the word or word combination with a mouse cursor or touches the corresponding region on the display screen  104  with a finger, a stylus or any other suitable object. 
     The touching or aiming a cursor  210  initiates a process that enables the user to see an abridged dictionary entry for the word or the word combination. Next, the electronic device  102  takes advantage of the screen&#39;s ability to establish the coordinates of the area of touching or aiming and matches these coordinates against the image on the screen. In one embodiment, when the touch screen senses the touching of the screen  104 , e.g. by finger, touch coordinate information corresponding to the touching is conveyed to the dictionary software application via the operating system. Techniques that determine coordinates corresponding to the area of touching typically depend on the type of the touch screen which may be resistive, matrix, capacitive, based on surface acoustic waves, infrared, optical imaging, based on dispersive signal technology, acoustic pulse recognition, or another suitable technology. In another embodiment, the touch screen may have a program interface, and the dictionary software application may receive coordinates corresponding to the touching directly from the touch screen through the program interface. 
     After receiving the coordinates, the dictionary software application determines whether the corresponding point is in a text area ( 220 ) of a currently displayed document. If the coordinates point to a text area, the word region pointed by a user is identified ( 250 ). A word region may contain one word or a word combination. In one embodiment, a word combination relates to one or more words, adjacent to the pointed to word, which, in combination, have a meaning defined in the dictionary. Consequently the system checks for a dictionary meaning not only for the identified word itself but for its combination with adjacent words, if any. The identified word or word combination is passed as a query to the dictionary. 
     If the coordinates point to an area encoded as an image (e.g. PDF, JPG, TIF, and other picture or image formats where words are not stored as collections of characters), an OCR software is applied. At step  230 , OCR software identifies a rectangular region corresponding to the user input that contains text. To speed up OCR, the OCR software may identify a smallest rectangular image that contains an image of one word or a word string in the area touched by the user. Alternatively, the entire document or its portion may be processed by the OCR software. 
     At step  240 , the OCR software is applied to the identified rectangular region. The result of the OCR processing is a word or word combination represented by a string of characters. At the OCR step, morphology dictionaries, which include the inflected forms of the words, may also be used, as higher OCR accuracy and error correction are often achieved by comparing the recognition results with word forms in the morphology dictionary. At step  250 , a word or words, selected on the screen and determined, if necessary using OCR processing, are identified as a dictionary query. 
     At the step  260 , the query is passed to a dictionary or a set of dictionaries that may be preliminarily selected by user. Dictionary software may use default one or more dictionaries or a user may specify a desired dictionary. A default dictionary on a given subject may be selected if the dictionary software determines that the text belongs to a specialized subject. Additionally, the electronic dictionary includes a morphology module, so that the query word or word combination need not be in the base, or “dictionary” form—the morphology module identifies the base form of an inflected form. If more than one base forms are possible, the morphology module identifies the alternatives. 
     At the step  260 , the morphology of the selected word is analyzed. The morphology analysis returns a set of possible base, or “dictionary,” forms of the word. For the obtained base forms, dictionary meanings/translations are retrieved. If the entry is to be shown in a pop-up window, as subscript or if the screen has a small size as in the case of a mobile device, the most likely (frequent) translation or the translation of the most likely (frequent) part of speech may be selected. Finally, at step  270 , the meaning/translation is displayed on the display screen  104  of the electronic device  102 . The translation may be displayed in a balloon, in a pop-up window, as a subscript, or in any other suitable manner. A translation of a word combination, if found, is also displayed along with the translation of the identified word. 
     The electronic device  102  may access not only a bilingual dictionary, but also a monolingual dictionary with definitions, or any other reference book, a travel guide, and the like. Additionally the recorded or audio pronunciation of the identified and recognized word and/or its translation may be played back, for example, by selecting this feature preliminarily or also by a touch, which is of value to language learners. Translations may also be obtained from a remote server. The remote server may be accessible via a data path that includes a wireless data path, internet connection, Bluetooth, etc. For example, a dictionary may be an Internet-based resource identified by a user. In this case, the selected word or several words are provide to the dictionary over the Internet and the results of the look up are returned to the device for display. 
     Although, in the above embodiments, user input was based on finger touches, it is to be understood that in other embodiments, other user input methods based on haptic input methods in general, or other pointing methods, e.g. cursor location or pen/stylus based methods may be used. 
     The disclosed electronic devices may include any electronic device that has a display screen and application programs to display text or text image on the display screen. As such, the electronic devices may include a mobile phone, a smartphone, a digital camera, a dedicated reading device or e-book reader, a PC, a notebook computer, a tablet PC, or another device. There are a variety of touch screen technologies. The touch screen may be resistive, matrix, capacitive, based on surface acoustic waves, infrared, optical imaging, based on dispersive signal technology or acoustic pulse recognition, etc. 
     The disclosed dictionary software application provides not only word translations on a screen of an electronic device, but also a capability to perform an insertion of a translated word or a word combination in the text. Such an insertion capability facilities translation of a text displayed on a relatively small screen. It is particularly useful, for example, for users of smartphones or other portable devices. A user may translate a text by inserting translation words and then save the translated text or forward it to another user. 
     Referring to  FIG. 3A  of the drawings, and, as discussed in connection with  FIG. 1 , the content presented on the display screen or touch screen  104  of an electronic device  102  may be outputted by any application (e.g., Word, Notepad, Adobe, e-book reader, a Web Browser, e-mail, a text message, or another appropriate application) that displays text on the screen  104 . When the user touches an area on the display screen  104  with a finger, a stylus or with any other suitable object or directs a cursor on a word and there is a word or word combination in the area, one or more translation alternatives of the selected word or word combination is displayed as a balloon or a pop-up window, as a subscript or in any other suitable manner. 
     The German text appearing in  FIGS. 3A ,  3 B,  5 A, and  5 B is translated as follows: “She knew that the pain in her chest became worse, the cough, sore throat, everything. She was deathly ill, but nobody else but she knew it, doctors just laughed and said that she was perfectly healthy and that no one at her age could be terminally ill. She checked everything: The heart was healthy, the lungs were healthy, the” 
     In most cases a word can have several meanings and therefore there are several alternative translations into another language. The advantage of the disclosed system is not only in the simplification of word-by-word translation for a user, but also in providing the capability of selecting an appropriate proposed translation alternative. Word forms for a chosen translation alternative can be proposed by the application and selected by a user. Word forms may include tense forms of verbs, singular and plural forms, and other variations of the words if appropriate. 
       FIG. 4  illustrates a flowchart of operations for insertion of a translated word. When a user wishes to translate a word or word combination, the user simply points to the word or word combination with a mouse, cursor or touches the corresponding region on the display screen  104  with a finger, a stylus or any other suitable object. 
     The touch or aiming a cursor  410  initiates a process that enables the user to see an abridged dictionary entry for the word or the word combination similarly to step  210 . Next, the electronic device  102  takes advantage of the touch screen&#39;s ability to establish the coordinates of a touch and matches these coordinates against the display on the screen, or uses coordinates of a cursor for this purpose. 
     After receiving the coordinates, the word region and the corresponding word query are identified at the step  420 . A word region may contain one word or a word combination. The identified word or word combination is then passed as a query to a dictionary. 
     At the step  430 , the query is passed to a dictionary or a set of dictionaries that are used by default or have been preliminarily selected by a user. Dictionaries may be local to the device or remote, e.g. accessible over the Internet. Additionally, a preferred electronic dictionary includes a morphology module so that the query word or word combination need not be in the base, or “dictionary” form—the morphology module identifies the base form of an inflected form. If more than one base forms are possible, the morphology module identifies the possible alternatives. 
     At step  430 , the morphology of the selected word is analyzed. In one embodiment, the morphology analysis returns a set of possible base forms of the word. For the obtained base forms, dictionary meanings/translations are retrieved. If the entry is to be shown in a pop-up window, as subscript or if the screen has a small size, as in the case of a mobile device, the most likely (frequently occurring) translation(s) or the translation of the most likely (frequently occurring) part of speech may be selected. If there are words adjacent to the selected word, the dictionary is checked for the word combination and, if the translation has been found, it is displayed to the user. 
     At the step  440 , most likely alternatives of translation of the selected word or words are displayed on the screen  104  of the electronic device  102 . The alternatives of translation may be displayed in a balloon, in a pop-up window, as a subscript, or in any other suitable manner. 
     At the step  450 , other alternatives of translation may be shown by touching or clicking on a special button or link ( 306 ) displayed, for example, within the translation balloon. Relevant word forms of a translation alternative may be shown by clicking on the selected word. Therefore, at step  430  the morphology module identifies relevant word forms, for example, in accordance with the form of the translated word in the original sentence. At step  460 , a user may touch/click the selected word form of the selected translation alternative. As a result, at the step  470 , a translated word or a word combination is inserted in the original text using the selected word form. 
     If the original text is in a form of an image as discussed in connection with  FIG. 2 , OCR processing is applied to the displayed text and the image is replaced with a collection of characters. OCR processing may be provided as a local application on the device or as a remote server capability. To use remote OCR the image is transmitted to the server, for example, via Internet, and the document or a portion thereof in the text format is returned to the device. The selected word or word combination is translated as discussed above and the user selects the appropriate translation alternative and words form for the selected one or more words. The user selection is then inserted in the version of the original text processed by OCR. 
       FIG. 3A  illustrates the translation from German into English of the verb “wusste.” When the user touches an area on the screen or directs a cursor on this word, a balloon or pop-up window appears displaying the following alternatives of translation: know; realize; and perceive. At this point, an acceptable alternative of the translation may be chosen by the user. If there are no displayed acceptable alternatives among the shown choices of translation, one may get the complete list of translation alternatives, if not all the translations were originally displayed, by pointing at the button  306 . 
     In one implementation, the capability of displaying not only a translation of a word, but word forms of the word to be translated is provided. Word forms include grammatical modifications of the translated word such as tense forms of verbs and a noun in a plural form. All the appropriate word forms can be shown by clicking or touching on the chosen translation as illustrated in  FIG. 3B . 
     The German verb “wusste” is used in the text in a simple past tense. Therefore word forms in the past tense will be proposed. By clicking on or touching the chosen translation, which is in this example is the verb “know,” several forms in past tense are proposed. For example for the choice “know,” the system displays: “knew, have known, has known.” Similarly, if another alternative of translation were chosen, e.g. “realize,” word forms of this word would be offered. 
     An insertion of a word or word combination can be performed by clicking on or touching the most acceptable word form. For example, in this case, the past simple tense “knew” is most appropriate. Thus, by clicking or touching on the verb “knew,” as shown in  FIG. 5A , this word is inserted in the text ( FIG. 5B ). The place of insertion with respect to a touched word may be selected by the user in advance. The translation may be inserted before, after, or instead of the touched word. 
     For any word in the pop-up window (for a word being translated or any variant of translation) a user may also obtained through the dictionary software its detailed translation and/or other reference information, such as examples of use, translations from dictionaries on various subjects (e.g. Universal, Computer, Economics, Science, etc.). For example a detailed translation may be requested by a double touch/click on the word of interest, or in any other manner specified for opening an entry with a detailed translation. The detailed and/or specialized information may be provided by dictionary resources stored in the device or accessible over the internet or a combination thereof, depending on applicable design trade-offs. 
     Also the interface of pop-up windows with alternatives of the translation may be customized. For example, by clicking or touching on the acceptable variant of translation in the pop-up window, in one case, the window may be expanded to include word forms or, in another case, a new window with just the chosen translation variant and its word forms would be displayed. The maximum number of alternatives offered in a pop-up window, vocabularies used during translation, the types of word form and their presentation on the display, and other relevant characteristics may be user-selected as well. 
     Also the capability of displaying only the most relevant word forms in the pop-up window may be selected by the user. So in the example discussed above, variants of translation will be offered in the following manner: knew, have known, realized, have realized, perceived, have perceived. Thus, a user may choose one of these proposed variants and insert it in the text. Alternatively, a user may request additional reference explanation, such as examples of usage, for any of the proposed variants. Also, the system may be prompted to pronounce any of the translation alternatives. 
     This method is especially useful for word-by-word translation of a text or for writing a text message in a foreign language. For example, it can be used in connection with Text Document, Word, e-mail, text message, address bar or input string in a browser. The disclosed method reduces time required for translation, since a user does not need to open multiple windows on a screen, switch between applications, remember the correct spelling of the desired word, and input translation in the text. Such advantages are particularly useful in devices with small screen (e.g. mobile devices) for saving space on the screen. 
       FIG. 6  of the drawings shows hardware and system architecture  600  that may be used to implement the user electronic device  102  in accordance with one embodiment of the invention in order to translate a word or word combination, to display the found translations to the user, to chooses the alternative of the translation and its word form, and to insert the choice in the displayed text. Referring to  FIG. 6 , the system  600  typically includes at least one processor  602  coupled to a memory  604  and having touch screen among output devices  608 , which, in this case, is serves also as an input device  606 . The processor  602  may be any commercially available CPU. The processor  602  may represent one or more processors (e.g. microprocessors), and the memory  604  may represent random access memory (RAM) devices comprising a main storage of the system  600 , as well as any supplemental levels of memory, e.g., cache memories, non-volatile or back-up memories (e.g. programmable or flash memories), read-only memories, etc. In addition, the memory  604  may be considered to include memory storage physically located elsewhere in the hardware  600 , e.g. any cache memory in the processor  602  as well as any storage capacity used as a virtual memory, e.g., as stored on a mass storage device  610 . 
     The system  600  also typically receives a number of inputs and outputs for communicating information externally. For interface with a user or operator, the hardware  600  usually includes one or more user input devices  606  (e.g., a keyboard, a mouse, touch screen, imaging device, scanner, etc.) and a one or more output devices  608 , e.g., a display device and a sound playback device (speaker). The system  600  preferably includes a touch screen device (for example, a touch screen), or an interactive whiteboard, or another device which allows the user to interact with a computer by touching areas on the screen. The keyboard is not obligatory for the embodiments. 
     For additional storage, the hardware  600  may also include one or more mass storage devices  610 , e.g., a removable drive, a hard disk drive, a Direct Access Storage Device (DASD), an optical drive, e.g. a Compact Disk (CD) drive and a Digital Versatile Disk (DVD) drive. Furthermore, the system  600  may include an interface with one or more networks  612  (e.g., a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), a wireless network, and/or the Internet among others) to permit the communication of information with other computers coupled to the networks. It should be appreciated that the system  600  typically includes suitable analog and/or digital interfaces between the processor  602  and each of the components  604 ,  606 ,  608 , and  612  as is well known in the art. 
     The system  600  operates under the control of an operating system  614 , and executes various computer software applications  616 , components, programs, objects, modules, etc. to implement the techniques described above. In particular, the computer software applications include the client dictionary application and also other installed applications for displaying text and/or text image content such a word processor, dedicated e-book reader etc. Moreover, various applications, components, programs, objects, etc., collectively indicated by reference  616  in  FIG. 6 , may also execute on one or more processors in another computer coupled to the system  600  via a network  612 , e.g. in a distributed computing environment, whereby the processing required to implement the functions of a computer program may be allocated to multiple computers over a network. 
     In general, the routines executed to implement the embodiments of the invention may be implemented as part of an operating system or a specific application, component, program, object, module or sequence of instructions referred to as “computer programs.” The computer programs typically comprise one or more instructions set at various times in various memory and storage devices in a computer, and that, when read and executed by one or more processors in a computer, cause the computer to perform operations necessary to execute elements involving the various aspects of the invention. Moreover, while the invention has been described in the context of fully functioning computers and computer systems, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the various embodiments of the invention are capable of being distributed as a program product in a variety of forms, and that the invention applies equally regardless of the particular type of computer-readable media used to actually effect the distribution. Examples of computer-readable media include but are not limited to recordable type media such as volatile and non-volatile memory devices, floppy and other removable disks, hard disk drives, optical disks (e.g., Compact Disk Read-Only Memory (CD-ROMs), Digital Versatile Disks (DVDs), flash memory, etc.), among others. Another type of distribution may be implemented as Internet downloads. 
     While certain exemplary embodiments have been described and shown in the accompanying drawings, it is to be understood that such embodiments are merely illustrative and not restrictive of the broad invention and that this invention is not limited to the specific constructions and arrangements shown and described.