One of Japan’s chief exports, other than electronics, is tourists. For this reason, it seems, they have been fixated on mobile translation technology for the purposes of maintaining literacy even in foreign countries. Japanese company Omron has finally developed a live-image mobile app that translates text in foreign languages just by pointing your phone at it. Imagine the benefit to tourists and business travelers if suddenly menus, maps, and signs were easily translatable in moments, simply by pointing your phone at it.

There have been a number of travel friendly apps developed in the last year that attempt to make users as bilingual as possible without actually having to go through the pesky process of learning the language. Famously, iPhone released an app using their voice-recognition software that is able to hear the user’s voice in their native language, and translate it, the phone vocalizing the words in the desired language to listeners. Called Jibbigo, it’s great for person to person communication (in small amounts), but tourists are far more likely to need assistance with written text, rather than speech. That’s where Omron’s new translation app comes in.

No picture taking necessary, and apparently, no installation of the app will be needed in smartphones released in 2012. Simply active that app, which turns on the camera function, minus the ability to take a picture and point it at the unfamiliar terxt. Using augmented reality tech, the camera will simply transpose the translated text over the original text (see picture above, from a Korean menu) Omron claims that the app will work even in bad light, or from difficult angles, and includes features that will find similar, or a number of possible translations (for the subtext inclined).

Although it isn’t yet available, and is only functional in English, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, Omron hopes to significantly increase the app’s translatable languages by the end of this year. A similar app, available for iOS, is called Word Lens and is used for translating English, Spanish, and French. However, there are certain limitation with Word Lens that Omron’s app is likely to overcome. For one, they’re much more aggressively pursuing expansion of their languages database to boost sales out of the asian market. The other great thing? It will likely be available for Apple or Droid.

Don’t be surprised if the next time you hit Times Square, the Grand Canyon, or the Space Needle you see some travel-savvy Japanese family intently studying their smartphones over the local menus. They’re simply taking advantage of one of the best travel apps likely to hit the app store this year.