Real time speech translation is the hot topic in last few days because of Google's speech-to-speech translation development news and our reported Japanese government experiment. However, translation among human languages seems far behind Canis language translation, you can tell if you are a native dog language speaker (unfortunately I am not).

BowLingual, Dog-to-human language translator which got The 2002 Ig Nobel Peace Prize, is planned to be released for iPhone in summer 2010, Tokyo-based Index Corporation announced [J].

The latest BowLingual will have Twitter support, by which dog owners can send what their puppy says to the world directly on iPhone. The owner can also send dog's photo and their comments, which is supposed to make dog owners networking.

BowLingual was bundled to one model of Vodaphone cellphone in 2003 (Ketai Watch) [J], but did not go on another Japanese cellphones at that time.

Author Information  @akky(Akky AKIMOTO) is one of the first pro-bloggers in Japan [J]. He also leads Asiajin, writes for Japan Times, does consultation for foreign companies interested in entering Japanese web market.

Tags: Japan, Joke // 5 Comments »