What is impossible in books The "Point-and-Speak" travel phrasebook series, published by Joho Center Publishing Company are filled with pictographic characters and text and are used to establish interlingual communication by pointing to those characters. It became the best-selling book in the travel & language category. The use of "Point-and-Speak" is completely different from "translation". Its purpose is not to translate, use correct grammar or correct word order, but rather to interface with and communicate with interlingual people. This is key when traveling. "Point-and Speak" method is a real-time communication tool and is better than translation tools or even interpreters. Three years age, we started developing a way to use this "Point-and-speak" method on a PDA. The digital "Point-and-Speak" holds more travel conversation content than is found in the books and has enhanced features that can't be offered through books, such as:
What is digital "Point-and-Speak" ? Let's say, you are a Japanese and you are talking with a Chinese person on the phone. While you are talking in Japanese, the other person is hearing Chinese, and vice versa. As another example, while you send a Japanese e-mail to your Korean friend, your friend automatically receives it in Hangul. No one ever dreamed that such an incredible tool like the ones in these examples would be possible. This is exactly what we are striving for in our research and development. The key element of digital "Point-and-speak" is that words in your language come across to others in their language. With this software, you can communicate with anyone in any language just by selecting what you want to say in your language and this software will convert your words into their language for you. Conversely, the other person can respond to you by selecting "reply" in his/her language using the same software. Development of the TAM system With the above mentioned goal, we were successfully granted subsidies from the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Corporation For Small and Medium Enterprise Promotion. Since April 2001, Evidence Group has conducted research together with the Musashi Institute of Technology Environmental Information Department. We created the application system based on the concept of "Language Set", a pictographic character (icon), text and audio combined into one set - the language database is an accumulation of this "Language Set". We named it the "TAM system" and applied for a patent. Currently Evidence Japan Corporation is the primary contact point and is taking the lead role in commercialization of the technology we have developed.
The TAM system is:
The TAM system is a multilingual application. This system provides a multimedia display environment with text, graphic and sound that are extracted from a language database. This new system makes it possible to create new, dynamic content plan in a multilingual environment, such as traveling, business and language category. Let's take a look at some detailed experimental examples: Utilization of web-based PDA The PDA version "Point-and-Speak" travel phrasebook, developed by collaborative research with the Yamada Research Group at the Musashi Institute of Technology Environmental Information Department. Available in 7 languages
This test production involved constructing a display page
from the database on an internet server. Compact Flash
version Utilized DTP data in the "Point-and-Speak" travel
phrasebook for English.
Used contents based on modification of book publishing data. The application and display data are stored in memory in
this test product. Compact Flash Version Stand-alone use is available without an internet
connection.|
A test on expanding the Japan-English version to
Japanese-7 languages (including Japanese) is in
progress. PC Trial
Version This will be brought to the market by Joho Center
Publishing Company.
Various content plans are in progress. Inquiries Currently Evidence Japan Corporation is looking for
business partners for the commercialization and operation of
the TAM system.
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