A major communications breakthrough is being launched in Austin - and will soon be available on most cell phones.

The mobile phone application is expected to break the communication barrier millions of Spanish-speaking Latinos face.

Jose Ortiz started working as a landscaper when he first came to the U.S. 16 years ago.

But earning a living, even surviving, would have been difficult without his cell phone and its new translating application.

"The program has many features that when we get here - many people who arrive here - they don't have time to go to school or take classes. Here we have something much easier,” said Jose Ortiz, through an interpreter.

Larry Upton is on the development team that is about to launch the mobile phone application which can be programmed without a data connection.

"And if you click on the center button again you hear, 'Are you hiring?' You actually get to hear the pronunciation in English," said Upton.

Subject categories contain 40 to 50 phrases which translate Spanish into English.

"Everything from on the job site, to house cleaning, to lawn care, going to the bank, in the emergency room,” said Upton.

He's collaborating with Austinite, Sylvia Acevedo, who came up with the CommuniCard idea a few years ago.

The cards use drawings to help translate. Programming it into a cell phone now places it into the hands of millions of Latinos.

"They all have cell phones. In fact 82 percent have mobile phones," said Upton of Latinos.

Edioma, Spanish for language, is the name of the Austin-based start-up. E-Digo is the translation application that will be used by potentially millions of Spanish-speaking cell phone users, like Jose Ortiz.

"So it feels really good to have developed something that's both commercially viable but is also going to have a bigger, kind of more encompassing empowerment approach for the disenfranchised,” said Upton.

Edioma will launch in May on AT&T phones and then later this summer plans are to flip the program so that it will translate from Spanish to English.