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Google working on voice translator phone, redefining synergy
Okay, so Google has this expansive online translation service, which we all know, use, and sometimes even love. Google also has its own branded phone, with a voice recognition function that we frankly adore. So what's a brave new age company with bottomless pockets to do but try to splice the two together into some kind of omnilingual instant translator? Speech-to-speech translation -- long the exclusive plaything of fanciful sci-fi writers -- is said by Franz Och, Google's head of translation services, to be a viable possibility within a measly couple of years. The Mountain View approach to overcoming the inherent problems of variable pitch, tone and accents in speech will be to use each person's phone to accrue data on his or her linguistic idiosyncrasies, so that the more the phone's voice recognition is used, the more accurate it becomes. Sounds tres bien to us.
SK Interview from Frostshock
Frostshock is a Hungarian site that covers World of Warcraft -- they've done us the kindness of linking to us in the past, but usually my Hungarian is so rusty that we have no idea what they're talking about. This weekend, they posted an interview with SK-Gaming, the group that nabbed the world first of Kil'jaeden, and while normally we wouldn't be able to tell a másnap from a kezdték, the newly redesigned World of Raids has a translation up.There's a lot of the usual stuff that you hear from guild after a big down, but there's a few new things in there, too -- apparently SK and other raiding sponsors are actually paying "premiums" for world first kills. Doesn't sound like a lot, but they do say they'll be able to do a meetup this summer thanks to their run in Sunwell, so that's a fairly substantial amount for playing a game. Both M'uru and Kil'jaeden are on their top 3 encounters in the expansion, along with Magtheridon, apparently. And the Sunwell "gates" system gets a pretty good review -- SK says it kept some guilds going even when they might have been burned out on the tougher fights.All in all, an interesting interview. They dive into drama a bit when talking about the friction between SK and Nihilum, but mostly, they just stick to what it's like raiding as a professional guild in the Sunwell. It will definitely be interesting to see how these kinds of guilds react to the 10/25 man change in the expansion -- raiding has come a long way from the 40-man runs in vanilla WoW, and these guilds may have a lot more competition for the 10man world firsts.
Translate! Ultimate Stars
Jump Ultimate Stars is one of the most popular DS games with importers. Since it's a fighting game, it's not a huge deal to play Jump without knowing Japanese, but there are a lot of missions that may be difficult to figure out. Also, the game actually tries to tell a story, which is rare for a fighting game. Abel Tamayo wrote in to tell us about a wonderful wiki project he's managing, called, appropriately enough, the Jump Ultimate Stars Translation Project. We've seen amazing fan translation projects from single translators, but never a project done in a collaborative wiki format. It's a great idea, one that will allow tragically busy people to help out. If you know Japanese, why not sign up? Translating a fighting game-- that's another rarity. SNK never bothered to do it.
English guide to Ouendan 2 menus
Among its other many virtues, Ouendan owed a lot of its overseas hype and success to its undaunting language barrier. Despite the menus and manga panels being filled with Japanese text, importers were able to follow the rhythm title's illustrated screwball plots and quickly pick up its self-explanatory controls. Ouendan's recently-released sequel, Moeru! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2, likewise requires little-to-no familiarity with the Japanese language in order to enjoy the game.Even with these assurances though, there are still many import-shy gamers who hide behind their mothers' skirts at the sight of kanji characters. Fortunately for them, the Platformers has translated Ouendan 2's menu selections, providing a visual guide with an overlay of English text. Most of the buttons and icons are obvious, but having a quick reference like this would be useful for first-time importers. Now there's no excuse for avoiding the cheer squad!
Train your Japanese-writing brain in minutes a day!
Kana DS won't teach you how to translate Famitsu magazine scans for your favorite games, but it will help you strengthen your hiragana and katakana skills. Think of the homebrew application as Brain Age for Japanese charsets, minus the floating, decapitated head. An alpha release of the project has been posted, demonstrating its "number sorting" mini-game. The only other implemented feature is a character reference mode, but we can already see a lot of potential for this polished application. Developer Julio Gorgé plans to include handwriting recognition, progress tracking, and difficulty scaling in future builds.It might not be as mind-blowing as Kanji Ken, but few games are. Check past the post break for a preview video of Kana DS. [Via DCEmu]
More English Training helps you order a cheeseburger
The sequel to English Training: Have Fun Improving Your Skills -- also known as Eigo ga Nigate na Otona no DS Training: Eigo Zuke in Japan -- has a new commercial demonstrating its usefulness. The television spot shows a Japanese woman attempting to order lunch at an American fast food restaurant, only to find her effort stymied by the language barrier. The resulting burger is enough to leave everyone's mouths agape.Set to hit Japanese stores later this week, More English Training is filled to the brim with over 400 "conversation situations" that will help users with everyday tasks like phone calls and customer/clerk dialogue. As the non-game's lighthearted commercial can attest, a little training can go a long way in making sure that your cheeseburger doesn't have any avocado in it.
IBM's speech recognition technology headed for trial use in Iraq
Being frequent users of machine translation ourselves, we're fully aware of the difficulties present in its execution, but IBM seems to think they've got it worked out well enough for some real-life use in Iraq. Their "Multilingual Automatic Speech-to-Speech Translator," AKA Mastor combines speech recognition, machine translation, and text-to-speech technologies to create a common translation engine that is apparently independent of languages. The system develops translation patterns off of regular conversational use of the languages, and is purportedly as speedy as a human translator -- and provides a text read-out of the conversation to boot. DARPA has had similar tech in the works for a while, but now IBM's Mastor is apparently ready enough for actual use, since they're shipping 35 Mastor-equipped ruggedized laptops to Iraq as a trial run, and will consider even more depending on how these work out. So far Mastor works for translation between English and Iraqi Arabic, standard Arabic or Mandarin. The system can run on a laptop or PDA, and should be making its way to commercial channels such as medicine before long.
Translation the visual way: MEDIASEEK's Camera Dictionary
Word's just in that cameraphones have real-world applications (besides tracking down the miscreant who stole yours), and Japanese firm MEDIASEEK is looking to capitalize with its Camera Dictionary utility. The software scans English words you snap and provides their Japanese translations on the fly, while links allow the user to hop online for more detailed information -- pronunciations, examples, and the like. Probably not terribly useful for reading a novel in a language you don't understand, but for translating, say, an Engadget post, this could be just the ticket. From the press release it sounds like Camera Dictionary will be available on KDDI's au network, but if they ever get around to adding a Japanese-to-English version, you can bet we'll be pestering American carriers to get on board. [Warning: PDF link]
Widget Watch: Web Translator 2.0
Web Translator is a widget that allows you to translate a web page or text using either Google's Translation service or AltaVista's Babel Fish service. Usage is pretty simple: enter a URL or text, chose the languages and off you go.This widget seems like a nice addition to Apple's built-in translation widget which only does text.
