Kupu

Spark New Zealand Trading Limited

About this app

Introducing Kupu, a Spark-sponsored app that uses the camera in your phone to instantly translate objects into te reo Māori.

Powered by Google technology and knowledge from the Te Aka Māori Dictionary, Kupu provides a new way to experience the language. It’s really easy to use – just take a photo of an everyday object (or upload your own) and see it translated in real time. You can save the translated image, share it or have another go.

As Kupu relies on the latest Machine Learning technology it may not get it right every time, but we’re working hard to improve it. You can help us by using the Translation Feedback feature to log any translations that don’t seem right.

We hope you enjoy using Kupu to explore the world of te reo Māori.

For a more comprehensive te reo Māori learning experience, check out http://maoridictionary.co.nz

Te Aka Māori Dictionary is a product of the life’s work of Professor John C. Moorfield (1943 – 2018). A humble and unassuming man of Pākehā descent, Prof. Moorfield was highly respected in the Māori community, and was affectionately known as Te Murumāra. Without John’s advocacy and dedication to the revitalisation of the Māori language we would not have such a comprehensive and rich resource to draw on.

Ratings and reviews

It's kinda fun, is it a serious bit of kit for learning Maori, maybe if you want a point n shoot experience to learn the odd word from everyday objects.. It's censorship feature would be better if it simply said Can not find a word, As an example I took a photo of my dog and it censored it because she wasn't looking at the camera. I don't know if this ever up dates, but it has a suggestion function, as well as a link to a better data base, for example I made a suggestion for an Ottoman..

I love Kupu! It makes me curious and I always want to take pictures to know what I'm looking at in Maori. The only negative side is that the words are very specific. If you take a picture of a window, something like "glass" could turn up but not window. Still, it's good that there's a search bar. And I like doing Kupu stories. <3

I think the range of kupu need to be updated as it is very limited. For example, I took a photo of a hair tie & it couldn't give me a word for it, so tried typing it, to no avail unfortunately. I do think the idea of the app is amazing, maybe use a different dictionary?