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The Panasonic company has developed a megaphone that which can be used as a translator of several other languages.
The device can translate Japanese into English, Thia, Korean and Mandarin. When users speak, the device automatically translates into the desired language and also reads it aloud. Titled the Megahonyaku (Mega Translation), users speak into the microphone in Japanese, and after it recognises their voice and analyses the sentence, the device automatically translates the sentence into four other languages.
This device is optimal for providing information to inbound tourists in crowded public areas such as train stations and airports. The “stationary automatic audio translation device” on the other hand is handy for one-on-one communication in hotel lobbies, tourist information centers, etc. Users can use a large touch screen to display maps and photographs to help provide assistance to visitors more efficiently. They can also program names of local areas and persons into the translation engine to customize it for specific regions and facilities. Panasonic also provides a more portable solution, the wearable, “pendant-type automatic translation device.” Users can wear this device around their neck to communicate with people in Japan while on the move.
Tomokazu Ishikawa, a staff engineer at Panasonic Corporation, AVC Networks Company commented, “The translation engine used in all of these devices supports four 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.”