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Tokyo Narita Airport Gets PDA Voice Translators

Posted by michael on from the nihongo-wa-amari-hanashimasen dept.

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."

12 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Pervasiveness of English by addie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:Pervasiveness of English by Cowboy+Bebop · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Languages are born as quickly as they die, my friend. They're predicting that Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and English will be the big three 100+ years from now. I'd love to know what English will sound like after 100 years of evolution. It's changed so much in the past 50 that you can see the differences clearly.

      If you like languages, please check out these websites. If you're bored, check them out too... you might learn that you are interested in something new!

      http://www.ancientscripts.com/
      http://www.omniglot.com
      http://www.langmaker.com/

    2. Re:Pervasiveness of English by addie · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Ok, I was going to let this one go but I just can't. First of all, I understand completely what you're saying. In terms of efficiency everyone speaking the same language would be fantastic. No misunderstandings, no confusion.

      A people doesn't lose its cultural identify by losing their language? Well maybe not completely, but it sure as hell plays a big role. Quebec is a great example! English speakers in Montreal are changing the way business is conducted, they're changing the types of movies that are shown in the theatre, changing the restaurant chains and stores. Many things that were traditionally en francais are now in English, which waters down the variety.

      I know this may sound a bit drastic, but imagine a world where we all spoke the same language, had the same color hair, were the same height, and had the same opinions. Not too much fun.

      I say no to efficiency at the cost of variety.

    3. Re:Pervasiveness of English by pubjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unfortunately most people who speak English as their mother tongue do not speak another language (by which I mean Brits, North Americans, Australians...)

      This means that they tend to have very funny ideas about languages, and a distorted perspective on language issues. When you say "English is all over the world, and other languages are fast losing ground", what you mean to say is that many people use English as the "lingua franca". However, this does not mean that all those people are stopping using their mother tongues.

      So you're not going to find all those Spanish, French, Chinese or whatever speakers suddenly stopping using their own languages and speaking exclusively in English. As far as I am aware, that isn't happening anywhere in the world.

      So, if you want to make generalisations about English being many people's second language and being the new lingua franca, then fine, I agree with you. However, if you are trying to argue that other languages are dying out because of English, I would suggest you learn another language and hang out with native speakers of that language. Then you'll have a better perspective about language issues.

    4. Re:Pervasiveness of English by An+ominous+Cow+art · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's the whole point behind Esperanto: to be a universal second language, so that nobody is at a disadvantage when conversing with someone whose native tongue is different then yours.

      http://www.esperanto.org/
      http://wwwtios.cs.utw ente.nl/esperanto/baza_inform ilo/en.html

    5. Re:Pervasiveness of English by kurtb149 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Esperanto is a rich and beautiful language that is easy to learn. Esperanto should be everyone's second language.

      --
      http://www.x2ii.info/
  2. Learn the language, if you can by aelfric35 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Learn the language, if you can by pubjames · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree absolutely.

      I read the other day that the troops in Iraq have a PDA thingy that automatically translates the local language into English. That is really going to disuade the troops from learning the local language and will keep a strong barrier of misunderstanding between the locals and the troops. Language isn't just about communicating fact, but it's about culture and ways of thinking.

    2. Re:Learn the language, if you can by Atzanteol · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It takes a long time to learn another language for many people. Especially one that is very different from their mother tongue (arabic is nothing like english). And soldiers on the ground need to know *now*. But I bet this little device doesn't stop the soldiers from learning. Think of it as a teacher. You hear the same word often enough (terrorist, tunnel, weapons, etc) and get a translation of it from your device, then eventually you'll learn it.

      --
      "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

      - Charles Darwin
  3. I'd call this a new low, but the robot would hear by ianscot · · Score: 4, Insightful
    What a freakin' article. This has got to be a low in sloppy technology journalism. It's also deeply ironic that the story itself seems to have been badly translated. I mean:
    Papero is the first all-hearing, all-seeing robot to be able to talk in conversational colloquialisms.

    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.
  4. On the other hand... by philv2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  5. Bah! Translation PDAs they don't need. by AnotherSteve · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.