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Tokyo Narita Airport Gets PDA Voice Translators
commanderfoxtrot writes "According to the BBC, Narita airport can hire out PDAs capable of translating 50,000 Japanese and 25,000 English spoken words. This is all part of the e-Airport scheme at Narita: The speech-to-speech technology was developed by NEC, tested in Papero robots and then put in PDAs. ... Papero (Partner-Type Personal Robot), is the first robot to translate verbally between two languages in colloquial tongue."
They were in the Copenhagen airport for a 2 week trial a few years ago.
"My hovercraft is full of eels."
Every time a story comes out, within the first few posts there always is a "this isn't new" post just dying to get modded up for being "informative".
Of course, without a link, the credibility of such claims remains in question.
Narita airport can hire out PDAs capable of translating 50,000 Japanese and 25,000 English spoken words.
Great. We're only going to catch *half* of what they are saying...
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Dang, I was suppose to go to Japan this month and now I am missing out some good live experience with these cool new PDAs.... grrrr. Anyone going to Narita any time soon to get a first hand experience and care to share with the rest of the /. community?
I can't wait for an English -> Pirate version or English -> Cajun version. and just imagine what a couple thousands of these things could do...
Will they be speaking ENGLISH or ENGRISH?
"Pardon me, where's the restroom."
-->"Kimi, bukkake demo yoroshii desyou ka?"
"The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten."
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
...Universal Translator?
English is all over the world, and other languages are fast losing ground (Chinese of course is ahead of even English). This means that many languages will very likely die out within the next 50 to 100 years. I can think of a number of First Nations languages that are barely spoken anymore. This kind of technology is exactly what is needed to stop this trend. If we can effectively communicate using auto-translators, then the need for (as an example) South Korean children to learn English (at the expense of other education) will be drastically reduced. Sure it's expensive now and only works with a few languages, but it's early in the technology.
In downtown Montreal I hear about 5 different languages going to the grocery store and back. That's not at all unusual. I'd be very happy if it stayed that way, because it's a helluva lot more interesting than the alternative...
Can you get the robot in a polished gold finish or in trash-can sized form factor for repair and interface?
To a cute stewardess or a female desk worker:
"Me, you, bathtub?"
i can't wait for "robots say the darnedest things"
-ninjaneer
what does:
"Kimi, bukkake demo yoroshii desyou ka?"
translate to?
i'm thinking along the lines of, "round eye wants to know where the western toilet is"
I'll be interested to see how this pans out. Its not neccisary to stress the differences between asian languages in general and english, obviously. Best of luck to them. After 4 months in asia, I'm curious to see what the Japanese version of decent english produced from a PDA would sound/look like. it'll be quite the accomplishment if they can make this work well. Engrish is never pretty for anyone. (see http://www.engrish.com for further details);)
this paired with the sleek technology/wifi lounge set up they have should produce a higher standard for international airports. cheers!
While I am naturally in favor of anything that promotes communication between human beings, I hope that advances like this won't stop people from learning other languages. For me, living in a foreign country and being compelled by necessity to learn the local language was the most profoundly educational experience of my life. Learning another language forces one to learn how other people think, how their cultural worldview differs from one's own. It offers perspective that can't be gained in any other way.
That said, to learn _every_ language is too much to ask. If the technology takes off, and airports, etc., start implementing it, these PDAs could become indispensible tools for travelers of all kinds.
"Den som vover mister Fodfaeste et Oieblik; den som ikke vover mister Livet." -Soren Kierkegaard
Sounds like a lot of work has gone into this just to get it to work between just two specific languages.
While the ability to speak in the colloquial language is useful, I would imagine a robot that could speak in MANY languages, with lower accuracy, would be more useful.
Patriotism - the last resort of scoundrels.
This is a quote from the article (Engrish!):
"Most certainly, it is absolutely ideal and it is most likely this technology will be utilised," - Chris Shimizu, NEC's corporate relations manager.
If he's using it, then all his base belongs to us. If he's not, then perhaps he should.
"Thank for being to fly with us today! Happy! Are we to join you in this service to be your continued enjoyment! Isn't you the joyful? Coming with us to the skies of friendly ancestors!"
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
All-seeing?? "Papero" is omniscient?!?
We have this 2-to-1 ratio of Japanese to English colloquial words, which immediately made me curious about why the japanese vocabulary would need to be twice as big... Nope, our reporter(s) don't seem to have been curious about that.
There are subtitles on the story -- "Lend me your brain?" and "Local challenges" -- that seem to have little to do with the text under them.
Neither our /. blurb nor the BBC article give examples of it working. You'd think they'd at least give us an example of sentences put in and out. Ask it where the bathroom is, and have your japanese-speaking reporter judge the results, at the very least.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
...now everyday can be like an old kung-fu flick
'Bear is driving? How can that be?'
'Let me show you how kareoke is really done'
'Could you direct me to the nearest bootleg toy store?'
'Overweight anime fan seeks cute Japanese girlfriend.'
'So, why don't you guys like the X-Box?'
and
'If I said I liked Princess Monoke, would you sit on my face?'
So are the robot versions jealous if the PDA version catches on more?
"That malfunctioning little twerp. This all his fault. He tricked me into going this way, but he'll do no better."
Why didn't you include it before? Not everyone here believes everything they read. Some of us like to think on our own too.
I travel on business quite a bit. Last year I was outside of the US more than I was in it. I was in Yokosuka Japan and Naples Italy for more than half the year. I tried to learn enough of each language to be polite, but the truth is that I will be in Greece, Japan, and Singapore this year and I do not have time to keep refreshing myself on the languages. One of my biggest concerns, when I travel, are the local customs and laws. I have to admit that if this works, I mean works well, it may take some of the stress of traveling abroad for those who go to many different countries. I need a PDA that tells me the local customs and helps me with the language.
Arr youl base ale berong to us?
by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
Technoli
In actuality, this should be from the "nihongo *o* amari hanashimasen" department. The particle "o" (the phonetic o, that is, historically it is the hiragana wo) is used in this case because nihongo (the Japanese language) is the object of the sentence. The particle wa (hiragana ha) is a suffix appended to the *subject* of the sentence, which in this case, it can be inferred, is the speaker (if we wanted to be more long-winded, we could say "Watashi wa nihongo o amari hanashimasen"). As it stands, the sentence says that the Japanese language doesn't talk much. While this is correct (languages themselves are, as far as I know, mute), I don't think it was the speaker's intention. ;)
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
There will always be a bias where humans will prefer to communicate/do business with other humans who can most accurately speak their language, right down to the dialect.
You can find it in your own country and every country; esp. between the northerners and southerners!
This tech is just a quickie stop-gap that lowers the barrier of travel for a lot of people.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Omniscient means all knowing. They do not say the robot is all knowing. So no, they do not even claim that the robot is omniscient.
I've had this sig for three days.
arr your engrish are berong to us
All green of skin... 800 centuries ago. Their bodily fluids include the birth of half-breeds. Self-determination of the cosmos. For dark is the suede... that mows like a harvest.
One could argue the other side of the coin and say that if we end up speaking less languages, we'll lose that much more of our intellectual prowess. Speaking different languages is definitely a good brain excerciser and provides the speaker with a different perspective on the world, events, etc, than other languages. Providing of course, that the speaker is (for example), thinking in french rather than translating word per word from his native tongue.
Different languages isn't something i'd like to see vanish either, they're definitely a rich part of our cultures. With translators like the above, once perfected, will allow us to communicate perfectly with each other and permit us to keep a significant portion of our cultures intact. Living in Quebec, god knows I've heard a lot about that!
This is a great idea but Japanese isn't that hard to learn to speak. Compare it to Finish or Dutch or even German. What's nice is that Japanese has a set of rules and it hardly ever breaks them: no conjugation of verbs, the verb always comes last in the sentence, etc. Sure, there are those tricky adjectives and politeness words but they aren't that hard. I cringe when I think of hundreds of foreigners running around with little PDAs asking questions like
"Where the bathroom be?"
"How much the coffee if milk in it?"
"Where the titty show for cheap?"
At least learn a little bit of the language when you travel. It really impresses the locals when you try. Also, could you imagine going to a business meeting and trying to use some talking robot to give your presentation...hmmm...on second thought that would be kinda cool. Now if they made one of these to translate kanji my wallet would be all a quiver.
Papero has quite some features. Especially cute is the "Patting Sensor" in his forehead. I wonder if it has also a "Kicking Sensor" in his butt....
Cheers
KdenLive/PIAVE - non-linear video editing
C3PO lives!
(runs screaming in terror)
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
For English to Japanese, hopefully they'll have a switch for whether the "speaker" is male or female. I knew someone who learned Japanese from his girlfriend and apparently that gave an interesting impression when he spoke. ;)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"I am a nerd!" Now translated verbally by your pet robot!
I'm not sure how useful a Japanese-English translation device would be in Copper Harbor airport.
Perhaps the results of the trial there would seem to indicate that they would be underutilized given their cost.
The good news is that it can be used in many other applications: 1) Standard issue in American taxis. 2) As technology improves, Peter Jackson will be able to remake the "Lord of the Rings" movies in their native tongues. 3) This, together with Godzilla's retirement, will really boost Tokyo tourism. The bad news is that the devices translate "Me love you long time" into "Me love you long time"....
I'm not a human, but I play one on T.V.
C3PO's great, great, great grandfather.
Language is a tool, first and foremost.
When we all use the same toolset, things will improve.
I think of that it is the thought this being good. To designate feasibility concept completely as this, the computer sufficiently is the powerfuly complete brusqueness coming. As for me in everyone it is within these 1 Tsugas several years and thing, it verifies that heriage of home country language is maintained.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Following to BBC, "you write commanderfoxtrot, as for the Narita Airport it can employ from PDAs which can translate the word where Japan of 50,000 and England of 25,000 spoke. This is part everything of e airport mechanism in Narita: Technology of speech was developed in speech by NEC, tested placed with the robot of Papero, and at PDAs. next... Papero (private robot partner type), being oral between two languages of tongue of the spoken language which is the first robot which it should translate. "
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
babelfish
Doesn't the Star Wars mythology take place a "Long Time Ago"?
If this is true (and who can say it isn't), this means that Papero is actually a throwback to C3P0.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Sumimasen, demo, kore wa watashi no... eto...
She jumped in and said in plain English, "Yeah, we were wondering where you were. The rest of the people got their bags over an hour ago!" Her voice practically had a Texan twang to it. It turned out that the rest of the people on our plane were Japanese nationals, who were easily permitted admission to the country, while we gaijin got to stand in the long-ass line.
As English is so proliferated over there, I do not see the PDA being used too much for translations in the airport.
--Chag
All your nihongo listening exams are belong to me!
In reality, I think it might be difficult to get to correct meanings unless you know some Japanese to start with. Among other things, Japanese:
- Adjectives are often constructions involving the above
The end result is the construct of noun-phrases that can be insanely long, confusing, and hard to directly translate. Ie "senshuu imouto no tanjoubi ni puresento o katta toki kaban o nusumareta" is basically 'the store I had my bag stolen at while I was buying a birthday present for my younger sister'[note:lifted from site by Kim Allen]. And that is all 'an' adjective. Literally 'last-week my-younger-sister (of) birthday (destination) present (direct object of) purchased time-of bag (direct object of) stolen.And there are nearly [if not] dozens of different verb forms/conjugations. Such that you could say 'Your gate is 2B' but do so in such a rude way that in reality the purpose of the sentence is an insult :) Converseley, your question would be phrased vastly differently for, lets say, a slightly older random other person, than if for an employee of an airline, etc. And you would likely cause discomfort...
And now off to JPN102...
Shi-tzu-rei-shimas [Goodbye, respectfully-literally '(I am)a rudeness committing'... However saying 'shi-tzu-rei-suru' would actually be rudely stating you are committing a rudeness [if said to anyone not a personal friend]. That is the same verb, same tense, and literally has the identical meaning- just different 'politeness' level..]11:11!
I would hope that I would not stay there long enough to be able to learn Arabic!
Narita doesn't need more English. Anyone at a sales counter or behind a airline desk already speaks English, Japanese, and who knows how many other languages. They've got that covered. There are three things that Narita needs to be a perfect airport:
1. Free wireless networking. They have wireless already, but it wants a credit card.
2. More than one shop that sells Meiji Black dark chocolate. I generally buy all they have when I travel through there, but it is not enough to keep me going until next time. In fact, they should be giving that stuff away for free, too.
3. Also, they need to keep the kids out of the Playstation play area so that us weary adult travelers can get some quality time with Jak and Daxter.
I'm not saying these are reasonable, I'm just saying that's what it would take for Narita to be perfect.
Information wants to be $1.98/lb.
I can see it now:
Droid: "I am fluent in over 6 million forms of communication. How may I be of service?"
You: "Can't you make this security line go any faster?"
Droid: "It's against my programming to impersonate a deity."
Then after you get fed up dealing with a droid and smash it to bits, you say "I'm going to have a drink at the bar"
Droid: "I'm sitting here in pieces, and you're having delusions of grandeur!"
I dont know, its the best I could do...
indierock / punkrock band photos and more... http://www.digitaldefection.net
How soon till they start making persocons?
This message was brought to you by the death of 30 brain cells.
I tried the e-navi in mid-February - I picked it up at Narita.
You have to apply in advance and they only have a limited number. Once you receive the device you can take it with you anywhere in Japan - you are supposed to give it back before you leave. I got bored with it so I dropped it off at the airport when I was there to pick up some friends.
I speak Japanese and English so it wasn't useful to me other than as a geek toy but I played with it for about 7 days so I really got the hang of it.
The device does use very conversational and very clear sounding Japanese and English. If you are a tourist this will be a very useful device.
Biggest issue I saw with it was social - Japanese people that don't know you see you coming at them with a weird looking PDA they tend to walk rapidly in the other direction. A couple of times I had to explain in Japanese first what the device did and then people saw how useful it could be.
The only other issue I had was that it couldn't understand my speech in English when I had a cold and was wearing a mask. Japanese was no problems (English is my native language). If I took the mask off and spoke clearly it had no problems.
You can also use the device as a cell phone for outgoing Japan calls only and it has other cool features like email and a browser.
The most impressive thing is the full speed speech recognition. It was 80-90% accurate for me in English and about 95% accurate for Japanese.
So tell me anyone, since when have you gone abroad and actually had to use another language?
Is there anyone here who can actually say they got to an airport and no-one spoke english?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Can it use contractions?
Why did the duck cross the street?
/.ers will try another tack, unless that rocks their boats, fills their boots or what-have-you.
:)
"I give my language to the cat".
Or is that a tongue? Maybe what that frenchman really meant was he gave up... but what a weird expression.
Make fun of him and he'll answer it's no weirder than "bull's shit". (Damn, those robot really do have sex with their expressions, don't they?)
Uhm, so yeah... these robotic helpers had better have a large list of expressions, and better yet, develop a way of learning new expressions in any given (sub-)culture. Or you will come to understand every single one of the horrible puns above.
And then, we can start having real fun learning cultures, starting with everyday etiquette. Maybe a robot can tell you that asking a Parisian woman for her number is interpreted as "You've got nice shoes. Let's fuck." After a couple slaps, I'm sure most
After language, expressions and etiquette, there are even more amusing misunderstandings. One of my favorite such stories involved my parents. While grocery shopping, dad mentionned he'd like some pumpkin. Mom made an amazing pie, but he thought this was an incredibly stupid idea, and tasted bad with all those spices. What's wrong with pumpkin soup, he asked?
So, I'm really happy these robots are getting developed... I'm just a bit skeptical as to how many barriers they'll strike down
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Speech-to speech - that's great.
Now for something simpler, can I have a PDA or "music/mp3" players which reads E-Books/websites. And one that takes dictation. Thankyou.
So what are the downsides to everyone speaking English (or Chinese for that matter)? Aside from the people who are ticked that nobody wants to speak in their language anymore.
Is there any possibility of REAL issues such as exist in our Software monoculture today?
I mean, if English dominated the lingual landscape, then it would make it harder for me to filter out all the spam I keep getting (about 1/3 is currently in Spanish now)
i'll be flying into narita in about a month! hopefully they'll have these in use.
sounds like something from star trek (i'm not a nerd, i swear!)
Last month, I had a chance to try one of these things out while I was waiting for my plane. Translation from my spoken English into Japanese was surprisingly good. You press a button, and speak; and the Japanese translation appears on the screen fairly quickly.
It didn't do so well in translating my spoken Japanese into English, which could have been my accent more than anything else, I suppose. They had a survey to fill out -- "Would you rent one of these", "How much would you pay", etc. and I got a free tie-tack pin. (Woo hoo!)
Also, to the reader who compalined about the lack of wireless net access, I think there is a free hot-spot after you clear immigration (outgoing), along the corridor with the duty free shops. FYI.
But of course, that wouldn't be mentioned on Slashdot...
Be an elitist - read Slashdot at +4.
I'm now in japan participating in the e-navi program now and I must report that the translator dosen't work. I've only used it as party trick because it only spits out very strange japanese phases. Japanese friends of mine call it the joke machine. The translation software is called Transpeech. The best thing about the PDA is that i get free wireless(cellphone) internet for awhile.
Forget Narita Airport, the Airport was fine the last time I was there. You got to get those translator things on the subway system. Foreigners don't get lost in the airport, they get lost in the subway. The signs in the subway are all in Japanese. Each subway line is owned by a different company, so sometimes, you have to exist one station to enter another station that has the same name. And everything else is compounded by the fact that their subway employees don't speak english and say yes to everything you say.
Machine translation is a mess. Controlled translation is promising.
The state of the art of controlled translation is BabelCode (www.babelcode.org), a formal grammar-based, pattern supported, object oriented, context aware solution.
Doesn't this sound like a first generation "universal translator" like in Star Trek? How cool is that?
And on another note, I wonder if it would be possible for some software like that to exist soley on the PDA so that you could truly use it as such.
"Pleeeez fehn-del my buttocks!"
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams