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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."
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
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.
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?
i can't wait for "robots say the darnedest things"
-ninjaneer
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!
I will be at Narita airport on March 31st. I will make sure to wear a camera around my neck and ask every one when Godzilla is next scheduled to attack.
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
OK smartypants, here it is!!
o ber.htm
http://www.cph.dk/cph/dk/investor/trafik/2002/okt
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?'
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.
well bukkake is japanese slang for being bathed in a male liquid and leave it at that.... All I have to say is if your translator says that..... RUN, RUN FAST GET ON THE PLANE AND DONT LOOK BACK!!!!!!
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Roughly:
"Hey, can I do bukkake on you?"
Your mind isn't NEARLY close enough to the gutter!
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."
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
Just to comment on the etymology of the word: this comes from a verb which describes the action of sloshing something against or onto another object. For example, taking a bucket of mud and sloshing it against the side of a house. I'm suprised (well not really) that some many people are familiar with this term. Once a friend of mine downloaded a movie from Kazaa with the title (Japanese bukakke) - before he knew what the term meant. He claimed he thought 'bukkake' might be some form of professional wrestling.
C3PO's great, great, great grandfather.
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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.
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..]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.
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)