Beijing Bound? Instant Chinese Translations on Your Cell!

Headed for Beijing (lucky you)? Not a Chinese speaker? Then you might be interested in an instant Mandarin-English (and vice-versa) phone-accessible translation service developed by Jajah and IBM.

Just in time for the Olympics, the Jajah.Babel service lets you dial a JaJah-hosted number (you don't need to sign up for the company's voice-over-IP service), speak a phrase or two, and get the translation in a matter of moments. The only charge to you is for the airtime.

Of course, that could could get pricey if you're on international roaming rates: The only numbers Jajah gave me Wednesday afternoon were U.S. numbers. (The company said it expects to have local Beijing numbers sometime Thursday.) The numbers, if you're still interested, are 718-513-2969 and 718-513-2968.

I tried out the service just for kicks (since I have no way of telling whether any translation is accurate). When you dial in, you're first asked to specify whether you want an English-Chinese or Chinese-English translation by pressing 1 or 2 on the keypad.

You're then prompted to speak the phrase you want translated. After a moment or two, the service asks you to verify what it understood you to say by playing back a computer-generated version. If you confirm its accuracy, the service then generates a translation.

To me, the Chinese that came back sounded like it had an echo--I would not have been able to repeat what I heard to anyone. But the idea is that you might pass the phone to a Chinese speaker who could listen to the translation--say, a cab driver ("Can you wait here for five minutes?") or a hotel chambermaid ("Can I have more towels, please?"). I can envision many situations where it might well be worth the international roaming charges to overcome the language barrier.

Comments

Post a comment Post a comment

0 / 1000 max characters