NICT, Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, introduced the iPhone app called VoiceTra which interprets what you speak. It allows voice input (original) in five languages of Japanese, English, Mandarin, Indonesian and Vietnamese, voice output (interpreted result) in these five languages and text output (interpreted result) in 16 languages of Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Tagalog, Taiwanese, Thai and Vietnamese.
Note: In the example shown above, what I’ve spoken is misdictated and gramatically mistaken. The translated result is incorrect, too.
The institute introduced the iPhone app called Textra for text translation as well. It supports text input/output in 21 languages of Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Taiwanese, Thai and Vietnamese.
These apps are designed for satisfying your interpretation needs in travel conversation opportunities in the countries where your unknown languages are spoken. 3G or WiFi connectivity is necessary because interpretation is processed on NICT’s servers. These two apps have been published for the purpose of performance evaluation and usability survey, and are available until the end of this year.
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Masaru IKEDA