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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."
You anticipated my thought: a conversation-translating PDA is another step towards a protocol droid.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
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.
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.
Yeah, and? There's nothing grammatically wrong with that statement; it's better English than I hear most Americans use. Yeah, he used the words "most" and "it is" twice in one sentence, but that's really the only nitpick - he used them in grammatically correct ways. Just because it sounds strange to you doesn't mean it's incorrect, and it doesn't make it "Engrish" either.
I clicked on the link to this thread because I've used Narita Airport several times and thought it was odd that they'd start using these translators when all Narita customer service employees already speak at least practical English (it's a requirement for the job). I'm a little surprised at the undercurrent of racism going through a lot of the replies here so far. I've looked and laughed at the Engrish.com site myself in the past (as has my wife, who is Japanese, and many of our friends) - I'm not saying we all need to be PC here. There's a time and proper context for that kind of thing.
But when you see a new translator hit the market, why would your first thought be to make fun of the people it's trying to help? It's just juvenile.
Anyway, I think Narita is sort of a strange place to test market these translators only because Narita is already one of the most bilingual places in all of Japan. Being there is similar to being at San Francisco International. All signs are in English, all ticket agents and other reps speak English (usually perfect English), even prices on goods are often listed in both yen and dollars. I just don't see how translators are particularly necessary at Narita; they could be put to better use at various locations inside Tokyo itself.