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Spoken Japanese-English translation Using Your PDA

Posted by Hemos on from the better-be-a-fast-microprocc dept.

Ewann writes "Yet another step closer to the universal translator: Digitimes is reporting that NEC has announced trials of software for your PDA that listens to spoken English and Japanese phrases, translates them, and re-speaks them in the other language. Should be very handy the next time I'm in Tokyo."

2 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. The Correct Link by pgrote · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Correct Link

    Sig: CompuNotes Rocks what else should I say?

  2. For those of you who don't read Japanese... by ilbrec · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those of you who don't read Japanese, I give you a bit more info on this. Based upon what I read here (Yahoo News Japan), it is a Pocket PC 2002 (which is no surprise, as NEC makes one of these in Japan). They are also hoping to make versions for other languages as well. What's written there seems the original Japanese of the post in Digitimes. And here is the press release from NEC.
    Based upon what it says on NEC's press release, it works via voice recognition, not via phone as somebody suggested. It is tuned to understand standard American English (whatever that means) and standard Japanese (which is well defined). The recognition is based upon common words used for tourists, so if you try to translate technical terms, it probably wont' understand you at all. Just like many voice recognition, the way how you speak will determine the accuracy of voice recognition (with a thick accent, you won't go anywhere).
    They will have special booth set up for this for evaluation of the technology in Narita Airport in late June.
    It probably works via voice recognition and translation engine. Voice recognition is something that has been being developed everywhere as you know. English-Japanese translation engine is something that Japanese has been working on for a number of years, as Japanese is very different from any other language, and pretty much useless outside of Japan, as nobody else speaks Japanese.
    Based upon my experience with these translation engines I have seen in Japan, they work very poorly. You will get most ideas across, but the sentences are very unnatural at best, often incomprehensive. Of course, these are often a lot better than English written by most Japanese. I personally think it is nearly impossible to make really good English-Japanese bi-directional translation engine, as Japanese grammers are so erratic and loose.
    Of course, these devices/softwares probably are better than nothing if you know absolutely nothing about the language...