Sharp's portable voice translator talks back at CEATEC

For those hopeless Americans (and Brits) who've found themselves perusing the spectacular isles of CEATEC without a clue of what's being said, Sharp is coming to the rescue. Unless you've had access to babelfish-enabled posters giving the decrypted skinny on all the new gear, you may get the feeling that your communication skills aren't exactly up to speed. Sharp's currently unnamed voice-to-voice translator allows for speech recognition and convenient audio translation so you can actually hear what you're supposed to say. The device sports a PDA-like enclosure, monochrome touchscreen, "music playback" functionality, "90 percent" accuracy (read: good enough to order food and a discounted Xbox 360), and a built-in robotic vocalist that belts out phrases in whatever language you command. The LCD also shows you sentences in both native and foreign tongue, but the prototype on display apparently only converts Japanese and English. While we aren't certain if this gizmo will hit shelves after its stint at CEATEC, it would sure make Ken Kutaragi's mind numbing keynotes a bit easier to understand in the future.

[Benjamin Biddle @ Oct 4th 2006 4:49PM]

Now that would actually be useful!

[page @ Oct 4th 2006 5:33PM]

http://www.talkmanpsp.com/

[tekdemon @ Oct 4th 2006 5:41PM]

If this thing is under $1000 I'm buying it!
Although I feel like it would be almost like a crutch against actually learning foreign languages.

[Mike Lohman @ Dec 18th 2006 9:42AM]

Magnificent product and WOW it will enable us thicko's to learn a foreign language as well.

[ACE @ Apr 5th 2007 9:20PM]

I!M LOOKING FOR A DEVICE THAT CAN CHANGE ENGLISH VOCALS ON A CD (FROM WINDOWS MEDIA) TO SPANISH OR ESPANOL.