RSSNEC device is said to translate Japanese on the fly
By Ed Oswald | Published November 30, 2007, 4:29 PM
Once again, Star Trek technologies seem to be making the crossover from science fiction into real life.
Technologies first shown on the television show have eventually inspired real life products, such as the idea of a 'sickbay' which is now widely used among Navy ships.
Although its not exactly clear whether the popular sci-fi series' Universal Translator device was the inspiration for it, Japanese electronics manufacturer NEC is working on just such a device.
As the application is housed on a microchip, it makes it possible for NEC to place it in a small device such as a cellphone.
The translator uses voice-recognition software and is able to translate about 50,000 Japanese words into English. Right now it only works from Japanese to English, and is intended to assist traveling Japanese.
When a traveler speaks Japanese into the cellphone, it displays the recognized words and then attempt to translate it into English, which is then displayed on the screen.
NEC says it would be possible for the phone to then vocalize the translation into English, but that is not being considered due to numerous outstanding issues. First, the company has to ensure precise recognition, and on top of that, the person on the other side of the line needs to know if he or she is being translated correctly.
Regardless, it is said to be the first time a translation service has been made available on a cellular phone without the help of a real person. No time frame has yet been given or confirmation whether the breakthrough would actually be offered to consumers.
What? Use a translator.
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I have no interest in a spam to English translator. :)
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On the fly?
Great, as if we dont have enough problems with the media translating foreign statements on the fly :(
There is just no way a computer currently can accuratly translate.
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Setian, atleast they are trying and it can recognize 50,000 words so why not give them some credit.
Easy to critize harder to actually do it.
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Point being the Japanese Language is not as easy as just translating words. It's open to so many errors
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this technology will no doubt fail, the R&D costs will be overwhelming, the computer power will not be there, and the powers that be will probably pull the project of the line because of the error % that will exists (error ration will be to high for particle use)
but this does bold well for the future, and it's news like this that let us know that one day there will be a thing called a UT (GT to be more precise "Global Translator" device, and as a personal note, it's nice to see another sci-fi idea being put to piratical thought,
but this kind of technology won't work until quantum processing has been created, about 80-120 years of, then perhaps this technology will be common place,
but it's still nice to see, and who knows, there's always hopes that some brainy person will have a break through in research that will allow me to see such a device before i die (hopefully in around 65 years time)
...amazing really....all these wonderful ideas in star trek that seem so out of human IQ capability, and then suddenly one reads articles like this,
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Well, judging from your comments, I see why you think such a breakthrough is so far off.
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In another 10 years... NOT even 20 or 15, just 10 years we'll have that startrek so-called "universal translator". Hehe that's funny I always used to wonder how the F*CK every species in the god dam galaxy spoke ENGLISH until they "cleared it up" for me with the good 'ol UT!
I wish they would just make one now that could translate female English to male English so i can finally understand what these b*tches are talking about! :D
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be great if it worked in RUSSIAN
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I'm not an expert on Japanese or anything but this is very exiting news if it works as well as they say.
Some of the problems that exist are such things as three alphabets, two numbering systems and "politeness" levels in the language. Because it's not Latin-based like many Western languages it works entirely different. You cannot simply exchange one word for another and have it translate correctly.
(There may be small errors in this comments as I didn't Google anything, and relied on the info in my meat brain for a change)
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This would be amazing!
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Assuming this technology sort of works, I love it!
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