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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. Nice idea... by oldave · · Score: 2, Interesting

    the article's short on detail, though. Which PDAs can handle this? It seems a processor intensive task, so I'm guessing there would be some pretty significant delay - it's hard to imagine it being realtime.

  2. Automatic translation... Ha, Ha, Ha... by Zero+Sum · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I once worked next door to the translation department for a major japanese computer house. The translators used to use me as a technical resource. One particular time, a translator looked at the japanese and translated the words as "fingering the ulimate nothingness that underlies everything". This was from part of some C programming instructions. Took me nearly eight hours to figure out that the phrase was "pointer to void". Automatic translation will be a joke for a long time to come.

    --

    Zero Sum (don't amount to much). [root@localhost]