South Korea plans to add Chinese and Japanese services to a homegrown mobile translator app that provides instant Korean-English translation services, a state-run agency said Tuesday.

Developers plan to add a Japanese service to the "Genie Talk" mobile app in the first half of this year and expand the service to Chinese in the second half of the year, said the Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

ETRI aims to provide the service in a total of eight languages, including Spanish, French and Russian, before the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics kick off, it added.

The Ministry of Knowledge Economy and ETRI launched the free translator app in October in efforts to build a homegrown system that can counter similar translation services by overseas IT firms.

Since its launch, more than 1.2 million users have downloaded the mobile app that is compatible on iPhones and Android smartphones.

Genie Talk can recognize 270,000 Korean words and 65,000 English words, according to the ETRI.

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Source: Yonhap News (Jan. 29, 2013)