Hands on With the PSP Talkman Translator

PSP News writes "Lik Sang has a review and hands on of Sonys new Talkman accessory for the PSP, which enables translation of 4 of the worlds most spoken languages. From the article: 'Traveling and meeting people from all around the globe sure is fun, but may have its drawbacks when you're not speaking the language. To ease this barrier, innovation comes via Sony which took ScanSoft's speech recognition software and created both an universal language interpreter and trainer for English and a couple of Asian languages: Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin) and Korean.'"

Korean?

[Anonymous Coward]

English, Japanese, Chinese, that's ok, where is Korean one of the most spoken languages in the world?

Re:Engrish

[dancingmad]

And how much Japanese or Korean do you know?

This stupid meme pisses me off to no end. I'm here in Japan and frankly the Japanese speak far better English than we (generally) do Japanese, and we're students learning Japanese. Yes, a lot of Japanese speak poor or no English, but very, very few Americans speak another language; further speak a non-Romance or Germanic language with any real skill. Yes, English study in high school is a joke. But on the whole, the Japanese are much better at speaking to foreigners than most American are.

And frankly, I have some rspect for the people who don't speak English. Unlike us South Asians who speak English as some post-Colonial hang up, they have their language and they use it.

Finally, it's damn hard to learn a language, especially when its so different from your native one. Japanese is not the hardest language to learn (out of what I've studied that distinction would either go to Chinese or Arabic). That some people can speak any English at all is amazing.

one wonders...

[versiondub]

The full scope and scale of this technology in the years to come. I'm a first year chinese student at Vassar College, with the full intention of becoming fluent - will learning a second language become useless and a waste of time when this technology improves to such a point that people will be able to speak quickly and naturally in their native tongue and have everyone else understand them with the help of a simple computer?

Re:I wonder how it would translate...

[lakin]

I dont know, it cant be worse than the current British method:
"Hello sir, I can't be bothered to learn your language, so would you mind learning mine?"

Re:one wonders...

[retrosteve]

Wonder away, Vassar Chinese Student, but get your language credentials for sure. This technology will not be useful in everyday conversation anytime in the next 15 years.

If you don't believe me, look at what it's made of:

1. Mechanical language translation (read any article through Babelfish to see how clear and comprehensible these currently are)
2. Voice recognition software (there's a reason it's been around for over 10 years and hasn't caught on yet except in niche applications)
3. Text-to-speech software (see 2)

So I confidently predict that by the time these "simple computers" make your Chinese education obsolete, you will have already made your career, probably be on your second career, and possibly be near retirement.

The first two technologies especially are easy to get working at 80%, but each percentage point after that requires much harder problem-solving and bigger databases and processing power. It just doesn't get easier.

Re:Engrish

[God'sDuck]

And how much Japanese or Korean do you know?

the concept of "engrish" isn't mocking non-native speaker's attempts to speak english, it's mocking the jaw-droppingly common practice of non-native-speaking *companies* thinking it's normal to have interns with no grasp whatsoever of the target language doing the translating for signs and boxes.

sure - my spanish is terrible - but when i'm preparing materials in spanish, i *ask a native speaker to proofread*

ergo: japanese =/= funny; engrish == funny.