Patent ID: 7277846

Claim:
A navigation system comprising: speech-recognition means for performing speech-recognition processing on input speech spoken by a speaker; language-determining means for determining a language in which said input speech is spoken based on the contents of said input speech as recognized by said speech-recognition means; navigation-processing means for performing a vehicle-installed-type navigation operation utilizing the language-as determined by said language-determining means; image recognition means for determining the contents of the characters included in an inputted image of a road sign; and an intersection guiding means for storing intersection records, generating an intersection guiding image corresponding to the specified language, and generating guiding speech data corresponding to the specified language; wherein each intersection record includes a plurality of intersection name strings in different languages; and wherein said navigation-processing means includes a guiding means for replacing the characters, whose contents are determined by said image recognition means, with other characters having substantially the same meaning in the language determined by said language-determining means, and for displaying characters or outputting speech.