The Ministry of Knowledge Economy unveiled Wednesday a smartphone application that automatically translates Korean and English to help ease the language barrier.

“GenieTalk” offers translation services through both speech recognition and text. The application is designed to help out those who face difficulties communicating when visiting Korea and Koreans who travel abroad. The app contains 270,000 Korean and 65,000 English words.

“GenieTalk senses Korean better and shows higher translation accuracy than Google’s well-known translation service,” the ministry said.

A trial run prior to the launch showed over 80 percent accuracy in translation.

At the launching event, Minister of Knowledge Economy Hong Suk-woo pledged to sharpen the technology further.

“As the software technology was developed and sponsored by the citizens’ precious tax money, we will promote convenience for the people so that they can benefit from it,” he said. “The purpose of the service is to vitalize the related industry and create new jobs by constantly improving the app’s performance by obtaining many users and storing up a database.”

The app uses Korean-English translation technology from the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute. The system took four years to develop with support from the ministry.

To lead the domestic translation service industry, the ministry said it will cooperate with medium and small enterprises to extend the service. Japanese and Chinese versions are set to be launched in 2014 for the Asian Games in Incheon, and European languages ― Spanish, French, German and Russian ― will be added before the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics.

The application is available free for download for Android users at GooglePlay and AppStore for iPhone users.

By Park Han-na  (hnpark@heraldcorp.com)