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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."
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
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.
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
Tell me about it. I was transiting Narita Airport -- running really late -- when I first encountered one of these "translating" robot/PDAs.
Anyway, it was getting late, and I was running later, and I was afraid I'd already missed my flight, because the airport was nearly deserted.
I turned to one of the ground attendants, to see if I could still catch my plane, and I asked, what happen?
This is how Japanese girl's little friendly-faced translating robot/PDA told me that all that evening's planes had already departed:
The robot/PDA's main screen turn on and it said:
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
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!