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Spoken Japanese-English translation Using Your PDA
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."
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Sig: CompuNotes Rocks what else should I say?
How does it translate: "All your base are belong to us"?
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.
If you're asking yourself, "why do we really need this," or if you're just a caucasian who likes anime and is just browsing Slashdot, here is why we need this!
now i can freak out japanese schoolgirls in perfect understanding of my intentions.
- colin
Which district? There are significantly different dialects of Nihon'go spread throughout Tokyo itself, let alone the northern and southern parts of the country. Try learning some basic Japanese before journeying to Japan. You PDA will likely end up calling a 30+year lady an "oban-san" and that's the last thing you want in Japan. :)
Why bother.
it seems really cool, and the article is a little light on details, however they say it covers words and phrases that would be good for travellers. I imagine that this uses the same type of thing that phone systems do, like "press or say 1 to talk to sales" that sort of thing. more audio pattern recognition. I can't wait until it can be used for more stuff such as business meetings, casual conversations and stuff...
Step 1: I go to Japan ;) )
Step 2: I go to a store
Step 3: I tell my PDA "How much is a new Pentium 5"? (they'll be out by the time I can afford to go to Japan
Step 4: The PDA thinks for 20 minutes
Step 5: It says something in Japanese
Step 6: I end up infront of a firing squad
Step 7: I tell my PDA "Please don't shoot, this is just a missunderstanding!"
Step 8: The PDA thinks another 20 minutes
Step 9: They shoot me now as opposed to at sunrise tomarrow
Seriously though, this will be need if it works, but I doubt that the PDAs will be powerfull enough to do it with any reasonable speed. Desktop's maybe...
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Stealth is the real advantage. Use a single earbud headphone, and make it look like it's coming out of your cellphone. Then you'll be able to eavesdrop in on the restaurant waiters while they laugh at your bad pronounciation, and find out if the chicks dig your American vibe.
I wonder if the translations sound as stilted as Babelfish - I don't know that I'd be able to keep a straight face while I used this thing.
What's your damage, Heather?
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]
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...
I would personally prefer a speak in, write out translator - I'd be more likely to pick up the basics of which every language I was emerged in, rather than completely relying on the PDA .
I don't imagine it would take much to add that feature, if it's not already there.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
Does this mean that we can figure out what the following phrases actually mean(?): a.Someone set up us the bomb, b.Main Screen turn on, c.All your base are belong to us.
I guess that would require a Japanese->English->Japanese translator.
-Sean
when it speaks back to you,it'll probably be in a robotic monotonic voice
No it won't. Software synthesizers have been able to apply prosody (the rise and fall of pitch) since the 1980s, starting with SAM for the C=64 and Apple II. Listen to "The Laziest Men on Mars - Invasion of the Gabber Robots.mp3" once. Note that Cats is the only character with a monotonic voice; all other characters have half-natural voices thanks to SoftVoice's superior technology. (Yes, it was SoftVoice; go to softvoice's web site and play the Colossus sample to see who did the voice for Cats.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
Most people have the ability to learn at least SOME of another language if they want to. Depending on your workplace, learning another language might be a powerful career move, too. I'm not going to trust some gadget to speak for me in a language I don't understand! What if your PDA got hacked? Hahaha.
Language is a product for person to person communication, and human communication is all about context, facial expressions, body language, and it is going to be a long long time before we get a babelfish. There won't be puffs of logic anytime soon! Hehe.
Just take a night class. They should teach more languages in public schools, or let students pick..
..don't panic
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/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
'nuff said.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
Voice recognition technology cannot identify MY voice and put down the English text for it, how the hell it is supposed to translate it into another language?
The minimal success rate even after hours of training
training program: "Say 'The Cat Jumped Fast.' "
Me: "The cat jumped fast"
Comp: "Error, please say the sentence 'The cat jumped fast.' "
Me: "The cat jumped fast"
Repeat 3-4x
Comp: "Error, you are not saying the phrases as directed on screen, please try again at a later time."
Fuck it. If I say "The cat jumped fast." I know what I said, and the damn computer had better adjust to ME.
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after all, if I were making something like this, I'd be reeeeeeeeeeeeeeal tempted to have it translate "How do I find the nearest bathroom?" to "I have three testicles!" or "I think you're cute, wanna go to my place?" to "I would like to feed your fingertips to the wolverine."
Maybe it's just me, I dunno.
Someone you trust is one of us.
does it speak like yoda?
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Really I think before machine translation is a workable reality, we'll need something like Cyc. To get a real, decent translation simple rule based systems aren't sufficient - you need to be able to translate the languages into logical formulae that can then be reconstructed into the new language. Cyc already has this ability to a limited extent (though only for english), but really, I think this is the way to go.
Learn another language? It's great to learn another language (I've studied several), but what if the second or third language you learned isn't Japanese? You can learn ten languages, but there will still be someplace you can go where you won't speak the language. Then, it's nice to have some kind of translation aid.