A handheld device that enables a user to chat in another language - without having to learn any words or phrases for themselves - has been developed by Japanese electronics firm NEC. The system is about the size of a handheld PDA and converts spoken Japanese to English and vice versa. It is planned for launch in Japan in the next few months.It consists of three components - a speech recognition engine, translation software and a voice generator. Spoken English or Japanese is recognised and converted into text by the speech recognition engine. The text is then converted from Japanese to English or the other way by translation software and the resulting text is vocalised by a voice synthesiser. The entire process takes about one second.The system will initially be aimed at Japanese tourists and business travellers and be available only in Japan. But Akitoshi Okumura, the NEC researcher behind the system, says there is no reason why it cannot be adapted for other languagesOkumura told New Scientist that NEC has started working on a version that translates between Japanese and Chinese. In order to work for another language the system must be trained to recognise native speakers. About 100 different voices are required to train the system, he says.
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