The Ivy Guide is a unique device that fits over any pen or pencil and scans words for translation. Basically it helps you understand the language better and makes comprehension easy. It is rechargeable via USB and adapts to your grip with ease. With international students crossing borders and the global community shrinking, this could prove to be a beneficial device.
Have you ever wanted to communicate with Jabba the Hutt in his own native language? Maybe send a message saying that you have captured and cryogenically-frozen Han Solo and are transporting him now? Well, here is the gadget for you.
This stylish Huttese decoder ring is only $13.99(USD), and for that price you can now communicate effectively with the Hutts and maybe even be a part of their galactic crime empire. With this ring you can rise through their ranks, becoming a big time player. Hopefully it won’t end with you sleeping with the Banthas. (No fishes on Tatooine.)
I’m gonna get one so that I can finally understand that 900 page Huttese epic I can never get through. It should only take a few years to translate it.
Last year at CEATEC, we saw NTT DoCoMo demo its translation app, which made life easier by translating a Japanese menu into English text. This time around the carrier is showing off the new Hanashite Hon'yaku service for Android devices, which can translate spoken Japanese to English and vice versa (it supports a total of 10 languages, including French, German and Korean). In addition to providing an on-screen translation, the system reads out your speaking partner's words in your language.To use the service, you need an Android-enabled (2.2 and higher) device running on either the carrier's spumode or moperaU plan. Provided you fit those requirements, you'll simply have to dial the other party, speak into the phone and wait for it to play back your words in a foreign tongue.
Of course, you can also use the service in person, which is exactly what we did at DoCoMo's booth. When we gave it a test run with some simple questions ("Where are you from?", "What time is it?"), the app had no trouble spitting back those phrases in Japanese so the DoCoMo rep could respond. When he answered in Japanese, the translation to English was equally seamless, taking just a second or two to communicate that he is from Japan. Though the app is free, you'll have to pay call and data charges (using the service for face-to-face conversation only entails a data fee). The cross-cultural barriers will break down starting November 1st, but you can get a glimpse of the service in action just after the break.
Japan's unique language makes calls to other countries a challenge: locals often don't have much choice but to brush up on someone else's language or hope there's a Japanese speaker on the other end of the line. If all goes well with NTT DoCoMo's planned Hanashite Hon'yaku automatic translation service, international calls will be as comfortable as phoning a store in Nagano. As long as a subscriber has at least an Android 2.2 phone or tablet on the carrier's moperaU or sp-mode plans, the service will automatically convert spoken Japanese to another language, and reverse the process for the reply, whether it's through an outbound phone call or an in-person conversation. The service will bridge cultures starting from November 1st, when it will translate from Japanese to Chinese, English or Korean. Indonesian, Thai and five European languages are coming later that month. If you're not that patient, NTT DoCoMo will provide a holdover on October 11th through Utsushite Hon'yaku, a free Word Lens-like augmented reality translator for Android 2.3 that can convert text to or from Japanese with a glance through a phone camera.
A few months ago we saw a concept for a camera-based device that is meant to recognize sign language and translate it into spoken words. A Ukrainian-based team has something better: a working prototype of a smart glove with the exact same capability.
The quadSquad team won the 2012 Imagine Cup – Microsoft’s technology competition for students – for their invention, which they call EnableTalk. The glove has 15 flex sensors, an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a compass, all manned by an onboard microcontroller. The glove sends input via Bluetooth to a custom app made for Windows smartphones, which will then interpret the data and output spoken language.
The brief demo below show the tester spelling “hello” letter by letter, which the app is able to translate after just a brief delay:
Head to EnableTalk’s official website for more information on the product. I tip my hat off to quadSquad; I hope the team succeeds in releasing a commercial version of their device.
The first time we featured programmer Will Powell, we learned how he was able to make a crude version of Google’s Project Glass augmented reality glasses. It turns out that Powell has made another version of his hack that is capable of translating spoken language and displaying the translation in subtitles.
Like with his earlier project, Powell used a pair of Vuzix STAR 1200 glasses as the base of the hack. If I understood what Powell said on his blog, a Jawbone Bluetooth microphone picks up the audio and sends it to a mobile device, which then processes the words using translation API made by Microsoft. The translation is then passed on to a Raspberry Pi, which sends a text of the translation to the Vuzix display and a transcript of the conversation taking place to a TV. Below is a shot of the subtitle being displayed on the glasses’ monitor:
And here’s a shot of the transcript on the TV:
Finally here’s a demo of the hack in action. Note that there is a significant delay in the translation, which according to Powell occurs mainly when the audio goes through the translation API.
The sheer number of gadgets needed plus the fact that the Raspberry Pi is physically connected to the glasses via an S-video connector means that this is not a portable system, but I am still amazed at what one man armed with off the shelf parts can do. Besides, all devices – including the ones Powell needs – get more powerful and smaller in time. The time when we’ll be able to reenact Casa de mi Padre is closer than we think.
A group of students from the engineering technology and industrial design programs of the University of Houston have come up with a concept for a device that can read sign language and translate it into audible words, as well as translate spoken word into sign language. It’s called MyVoice and is meant to be a handheld device with a built-in camera, speaker, soundboard, microphone and monitor.
Yeah, I’m not sure where the monitor is in that mock-up either, but that’s all we have to work with. We’ve seen a hack based on motion sensing designed to teach sign language, but it seems like the students took a different approach with MyVoice – the device relies on a database of images to recognize signs. The students did say that they were able to build a prototype of MyVoice that was able to translate the phrase “A good job, Cougars.” The students hope that they can find partners to turn their concept into a real product.
Not content to simply dabble in double-sided transparent touchscreens, Japanese mobile provider NTT DoCoMo continues its efforts to break the language barrier -- this time with a new Android app. "Mail Honyaku Concier" (honyaku means "translation" in Nihongo, while that last word is a play on "concierge") is a free app that lets users translate text into different languages. The software is compatible with smartphones and tablets sporting Android 2.2 or higher and accepts both keyboard and voice input for text. As part of its translation, the app sends a copy of the source material in its original language -- you know, just in case the thing does a Sheldon Cooper and coughs up "Oxen are in my bed." In addition to working with NTT DoCoMo's "sp Mode Mail" service, the software also plays nice with other apps. Languages supported so far are Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean. As with any translator, you might want to use this with caution when dealing with important people -- like potential business clients or fathers-in-law, for example.
By far one of the greatest challenges of sign language has been to translate it for everyday folk that wouldn't know where to begin a conversation with the deaf. Cornell University engineering students Ranjay Krishna, Seonwoo Lee and Si Ping Wang -- along with some help from Jonathan Lang -- used their final project time this past semester to close this gap in one of the more practical solutions we've seen to date. Their prototype glove uses accelerometers, contact sensors and flex sensors to translate complex finger gestures from the American Sign Language alphabet into spoken letters: after converting hand positions to digital signals, the test unit both speaks out the resulting letters and sends them to a computer, where they can be used for anything from a game (shown in the video below) to, presumably, constructing whole sentences. Along with being accurate, the Cornell work is even designed with a mind towards how it would work in the real world, as the glove and its transmitter are both wireless and powered by 9-volt batteries. We hope that the project leads to a real product and an extra bridge between the deaf and the rest of us, but in the meantime, we'll be happy that at least one form of powered glove is being put to the noblest use possible.
Never again will Windows Phone owners worry about ordering raw beef in Spain without first knowing what'll arrive on their plate. That's because the crew at Microsoft have updated the Bing Translator app, which is available for free in the Marketplace. It now allows users to point their cameras at otherwise unintelligible text and then view a proper translation as an overlay on the photograph. As another nifty trick, Bing Translate allows users to speak phrases into their phone, which will then be audibly translated into a foreign language of choice. Most impressive, however, is the app's new offline capabilities, which can be enabled with the simple download of a language pack. Bing Translator supports English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Chinese Simplified, and if you'd like a peek into its functionality, just hop the break for the video.
