This paper presents a snapshot translation system, Cyclops. It realizes the translation of textural information being captured as an image via a digital camera of mobile device. The design framework of Cyclops is targeted at providing user the most comprehensive interface in using language translation tool to access the meaning of nonnative text in a more natural and efficient way. It supports the translation of languages from Chinese to Portuguese and English. In the course of system realization, several technical challenges were encountered. The system has been developed based on the technologies of image processing, optical character recognition (OCR), and machine translation (MT). Most importantly, the system is designed to run on the common usage mobile devices which have memory and storage limitations. © 2011 ACADEMY Publisher.