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Toshiba Intros Trilingual Translation App For Cellphones
MojoKid writes "Shortly after hearing of a simple, two-way Spanish-to-English translator for the iPhone, Toshiba has announced that it has developed a new language translation system that requires no server-side interaction. The app is designed to be operated independently on a smartphone, which will eliminate costly data roaming fees that are generally incurred using systems that require an internet connection to retrieve translations. The system is trilingual in nature and enables users to translate freely among Japanese, Chinese, and English."
If being able to handle three languages is "trilingual", what do you call a phone that can only support one language?
There are no roaming fees in China, only "People's Harmonious Technological Journey Dues".
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
The Translation is:
"Hello? have I reached the owner of this cellular phone? You mistakenly left it on the train, and I wanted to mail it back to you. A reward? No, that won't be necessary; the good deed is a reward in itself."
Finally, a translation app that just might be effective.
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
There is a world of difference between translating between Spanish and English (two European languages) and English and Japanese or English and Chinese.
Even bilingual people have trouble,www.engrish.com
Chinese: "Huong xi ching chang shen chong." Japanese: "Toko ne tatekawa no kesaki." English: "Yes honorable sex-worker, please do shit on my chest and insert an octopus in my ass."
Given the usual accuracy of automated translation systems, this is what you'll get when you ask for directions to nearest 4 star hotel.
I've poked around Talk to Me, an app for Android. You speak your phrase into it and it speaks back in the language of your choice.
I don't know if it requires a data connection or not, but we're living in the future now.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
When they develop a phone for anilingus, I'll be the first in line.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
This will definitely make it easier and slightly cheaper to meet and communicate with my future wife! Maybe. Or not.
Keith D.
"What did he say?" ..."
"I dunno - here - give him this iPhone - it has a translation app"
"Nah - it's bust - no network signal in this area, something about the local cell provider not supporting network heavy phones in this area - If only it was a Toshiba"
"Anyway, where's that syringe gone
As anyone who has ever used an online translation engine can tell you, going between English and either Chinese or Japanese leads to a stream of gibberish which at best gives the wily reader a hint of what the original topic might have been about.
I foresee a few tourists on both sides of the pond having some epic adventures as a result of relying upon this app :)
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
"My hovercraft is full of eels."
Scientists are more likely to design a warp drive before they do a truly effective translation program. Anyone who is bilingual would be happy to tell you just how difficult translation is. Human languages are not just sets of words and phrases that can be converted 1 for 1 back and forth. They are extremely complex with shades of meaning and varying context which must be inferred based on associations that only humans are able to make. It seems that monolingual Anglophones are the most difficult people to convince just how terrible computer translators are. In my office in Germany we usually get two or three pieces of correspondence a week where some Anglophone, ignorant of foreign languages, tries to translate their English to German and send it to us thinkiong they are doing us a "favour". It's always good for a laugh....
Most of the stuff in the Engrish site is not a good example of difficulties in translation at all. A true example of difficulty in translation would be when a full bilingual (somebody who can understand and speak both languages correctly) would have difficulty rendering the meaning of a source language text into the target language without either using a lot of footnotes/parentheticals, or just dropping a lot of nuance.
The examples on the Engrish site don't fall into that category, for the most part, either because they're not really translations, or because they're translations but the people doing them are not bilingual enough to produce grammatical, idiomatic English. They fall into these:
Are you adequate?
A trilingual translator. Impressive, I suppose. But how long will it be before we get the universal translator of Star Trek and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (babelfish) fame? I might be tempted to pay $5 for such a beast.
http://ihatehate.wordpress.com
....and when someone does hack it, we're going to see:
"My hoooovercraft is full of eels....."
"Please fondle my buttocks"
"Pull down your panties, I can't wait till lunchtime"
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.