NEC develops Japanese-English interpretation software for cell phones

Tuesday 06th January, 09:22 AM JST

TOKYO —

NEC Corp said Monday that it has developed automatic software for cell phones that quickly and accurately provides interpretation of words and phrases commonly associated with travel.

The new software is specialized for compact cell phone CPUs and provides automatic interpretation from Japanese to English and English to Japanese. Demonstrations of the software have been embedded in NEC cell phones, which independently provide interpretation without the need for network connections or outside servers. Furthermore, only a few moments are required for the software to recognize a word or phrase before an interpretation is conveniently displayed.

NEC said the development stems from a high precision “compact and scalable voice recognition engine” and a “lexical-rule-based translation device.”

The accuracy of NEC’s voice recognition software under noisy conditions has been significantly improved, while the size of the device has been considerably reduced. NEC also said that it has significantly improved the range of words and expressions recognized by the device through an expanded database that has not increased the size of the product.

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11 Comments

Sammi33 at 10:21 AM JST - 6th January

Great, talking Babelfish for your phone. "I want to take the number 4 bus" "I have bus of number 4 mushroom tree"
mojibake at 10:36 AM JST - 6th January

It's actually not bad as long as you stick to travel phrases ... think of it as a phrasebook that won't survive getting wet.
nandakandamanda at 10:40 AM JST - 6th January

Let's see, erm... "Nippon wa nagai desu ka?"

Click.

= "Is Japan a long country?"
neverknow2 at 11:29 AM JST - 6th January

phrases commonly associated with travel.

Yeah like 'blunch' and 'abroad'
Skywards at 12:58 PM JST - 6th January

This feature could be a refinement of the translation units developed for expo 2005 to be used at the airports.

Wish the program could expand to other industries' jargon and phrases.
whitepocky at 02:17 PM JST - 6th January

The accuracy of NEC’s voice recognition software under noisy conditions has been significantly improved, while the size of the device has been considerably reduced.

As is the norm with all the technilogical devices, it will only recognise the one accent. Do you think it would pick up a broad scouse accent, I think not!!!
GG2141 at 02:29 PM JST - 6th January

You can bet you life on it. = seishin o kakeru yo. (translate that for a laugh)
Beelzebub at 08:19 PM JST - 6th January

Moshi-moshi = "if, if!"
Ranger_Miffy at 08:35 PM JST - 6th January

Great. I suppose I will get the same NONsense I see everyday from my Japanese students-all brainwashed that "English" and "EnGrish" are the same. God help us all.
elbudamexicano at 05:25 PM JST - 10th January

Ok NEC my kudos to you all, now hurry up and make it from ENGLISH to Japanese or Spanish to Japanese etc..ASAP!
Yelnats at 03:36 PM JST - 12th January

Sure sounds to me like another un-needed bit of technology. If it works like babelfish on the net, then we are in for some funny moments. "I would like to reserve the last leaving train or, rike to leserve the rast reaving tlain....