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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
Will they be speaking ENGLISH or ENGRISH?
"Pardon me, where's the restroom."
-->"Kimi, bukkake demo yoroshii desyou ka?"
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...
i can't wait for "robots say the darnedest things"
-ninjaneer
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
You anticipated my thought: a conversation-translating PDA is another step towards a protocol droid.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
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.
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.
'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.
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
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.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
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..]