Tokyo Friendfinder
It’s not the first time we’ve seen phones that purport to translate between languages, but NEC’s claims for its new mobile travel interpreter are certainly among the grandest.
The company says its software can take words spoken into a phone’s mic and translate both ways between Japanese and English in real time without recourse to a network connection to a server, displaying the result as onscreen text.
NEC’s press release explains that the software, which is now on show in a prototype handset, has evolved from previous work, including a “compact and scalable voice recognition engine” and a “lexical-rule-based translation device.”
Most importantly, the new system is supposed to be quick (“a few moments”), perfect for mobile CPUs and can work in noisy conditions.
We’re also pleased to note that it includes a “Model-Based Wiener Filter.” No, really.
(Via NEC)
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03:30 PM 
Mark Hiratsuka •
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R&D | Wireless 
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