|21 November 2016|
Japan
Panasonic’s Megahonyaku (Mega Translation) megaphone is one of three pioneering ‘multilingual solutions’ it has developed to welcome visitors to Japan.
The megaphone is ideal for communicating with tourists in crowded airports, train stations and popular tourist destinations. It translates into three different languages, including English.
With increasing numbers of people travelling internationally there is a greater demand than ever for translation tools. And with Japan being such a popular destination, with its capital Tokyo set to host the Olympics in 2020 , the nation’s technology giants are focussing their strengths on creating pioneering products that translate information into various languages.
Another of Panasonic’s is a ‘stationary automatic audio translation device’ suitable for ‘one-on-one communication’ in places like hotel lobbies and tourist information centres. And for those on the move it has a wearable ‘pendant-type automatic translation device’ which allows users to speak with locals while they make there way around.
Tomokazu Ishikawa, a staff engineer at Panasonic Corporation, AVC Networks Company said: “The translation engine used in all of these devices supports 4 languages, English, Chinese, Korean, and Thai, but we will continue to add more languages in time for 2020. We are also currently developing a ‘corpus extension engine’ that can search for sentence samples available on the Internet to enhance its accuracy, and we hope to provide authentic translation that also incorporates a wide range of colloquial and up-to-date expressions.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLlEILlCrA4
