Insertion of translation in displayed text consisting of grammatical variations pertaining to gender, number and tense

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

identifying, based on user input, a word in a text displayed on a screen of a device, the text consisting of a plurality of words to be translated;

performing a dictionary lookup of the word so as to determine translation alternatives of the word;

displaying a plurality of the translation alternatives of the word on the screen of the device;

selecting, based on user input, a preferred translation alternative from the plurality of translation alternatives;

determining and displaying a plurality of word forms of the preferred translation alternative,

wherein the word forms consist of gender, number, grammatical tense, and grammatical variations of same word;

selecting, based on user input, a selected word form from the plurality of word forms of the preferred translation alternative;

and inserting the selected word form in the text.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, if the text has been stored as image data, performing a text recognition operation to extract textual information from the image data representing the text.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein performing the text recognition operation comprises applying an optical character recognition technique.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein performing the text recognition operation comprises comparing a recognition result with similar word forms obtained from a morphological dictionary.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the user input comprises one of pointer-based or haptic-based input.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the haptic-based input comprises touch-based inputs.

7. The method of claim 5 , wherein the pointer-based input comprises cursor-based inputs.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the device is a handheld device with a small display area.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the device is a smart phone and includes a cellular telephone capability.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of translation alternatives includes most likely translations corresponding to the word.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein a maximum number of translation alternatives in the plurality of translation alternatives is determined by the user.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the displaying of a plurality of word forms of the preferred translation alternative comprises displaying the plurality of word forms in the form of one of a pop-up window, superscript text, subscript text, and a text balloon.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein at least one of the translation alternatives and the word forms are displayed in the same pop-up window or a text balloon.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the translation alternatives are in a language different from the language of the word.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the translation alternatives and the word are in the same language.

16. The method of claim 1 , wherein inserting the selected word form in the text includes replacing the word with the selected word form, the text being in a first language and the selected word form being in a second language.

17. The method of claim 1 , wherein inserting the selected word form in the text includes adding the selected word form to the text adjacent the word.

18. The method of claim 1 , further comprising displaying additional ones of the translation alternatives in response to the user input.

19. The method of claim 1 , wherein a representation of the displayed text is stored in the device.

20. The method of claim 1 , wherein the text is at least a part of one of the following: a document, a text message, an e-mail, or a browser input.

21. The method of claim 1 , wherein the performing the dictionary lookup comprises performing morphological analysis to identify a base form of the word.

22. The method of claim 1 , further comprising looking up the preferred translation alternative in a morphological dictionary, so as to determine the plurality of word forms.

23. The method of claim 1 wherein the plurality of word forms are selected based on the word form of the word.

24. The method of claim 1 , further comprising displaying the plurality of translation alternatives of the word in base form.

25. The method of claim 1 , further comprising displaying the plurality of translation alternatives as word forms consistent with the word form of the word.

26. The method of claim 1 , further comprising displaying a detailed translation based on a specialized dictionary for one of the translation alternatives in response to a user input.

27. The method of claim 1 , wherein performing the dictionary lookup comprises accessing at least one dictionary selected from the group consisting of a local dictionary and a remote dictionary.

28. The method of claim 1 , further comprising playing back an audio pronunciation associated with a result of the dictionary lookup.

29. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying, based on user input, a word in a text displayed on a screen of a device comprises:

detecting user input associated with a portion of the display screen;

establishing coordinates associated with the user input; and

identifying a portion of the text associated with the coordinates.

30. The method of claim 1 , further comprising displaying new text comprising the text with the selected word form inserted therein.

31. An electronic device, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory coupled to the processor, the memory storing instructions which when executed by the processor cause the system to perform a method comprising:

identifying, based on user input, a word in a text displayed on a screen of a device, the text consisting of a plurality of words to be translated;

performing a dictionary lookup of the identified word so as to determine translation alternatives of the word;

displaying a plurality of the translation alternatives of the identified word on the screen of the device;

selecting, based on user input, a preferred translation alternative from the plurality of translation alternatives of the identified word;

determining and displaying a plurality of word forms of the preferred translation alternative,

wherein the word forms consist of gender, number, grammatical tense, and grammatical variations of same word;

selecting, based on user input, a selected word form from the plurality of word forms of the preferred translation alternative;

and inserting the selected word form in the text.

32. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon a sequence of instructions which when executed by a system cause the system to perform a method, comprising:

identifying, based on user input, a word in a text displayed on a screen of a device, the text consisting of a plurality of words to be translated;

performing a dictionary lookup of the identified word so as to determine translation alternatives of the word;

displaying a plurality of the translation alternatives of the identified word on the screen of the device;

selecting, based on user input, a preferred translation alternative from the plurality of translation alternatives of the identified word;

determining and displaying a plurality of word forms of the preferred translation alternative,

wherein the word forms consist of gender, number, grammatical tense, and grammatical variations of same word;

selecting, based on user input, a selected word form from the plurality of word forms of the preferred translation alternative;

and inserting the selected word form in the text.