OT-IBM's Translator Makes Handhelds Multilingual
By Jay Wrolstad
Wireless NewsFactor
January 2, 2003
"This is all about adding capabilities to the mobile workforce -- or for anyone who deals
with content that must be translated," said IBM's Sunil Soares. "Users can translate notes,
Web pages or messages to and from English."
You are in a foreign country and need directions to the nearest Starbucks (Nasdaq:
SBUX) . Or maybe you need to translate an e-mail that is sent to your PDA in a
language you do not speak. No problem, globetrotter. IBM (NYSE: IBM) believes it
has what is needed to quickly decipher that foreign tongue.
Called ViaVoice Translator, the recently released software lets handheld users enter
text in one language and get it back in another. It provides two-way text and
speech translations from English to French, Italian, German or Spanish on Compaq's
iPAQ Pocket PC devices.
Mobile Workforce Tool
While typical phrase or dictionary translation applications are
limited to specific words or sentences, the ViaVoice machine
translation, built on technology from IBM's WebSphere server
offering, enables translations of longer documents in
context.
"This is all about adding capabilities to the mobile workforce --
or for anyone who deals with content that must be translated,"
Sunil Soares, director of product management for IBM's
pervasive computing division, told NewsFactor. "Users can
translate notes, Web pages or messages to and from English."
The software includes 50 preloaded sentences, such as "Where
is the train station?" or "I would like to exchange money." Text
can be entered from the desktop, from a soft keyboard or from
a handwriting recognizer directly into the iPAQ. It also can be
copied and pasted from any text-based document.
For iPAQ Users
Personalized expressions for real-time translation can be added
or deleted by individual users, and the text-to-speech
function can help with pronunciation of difficult words and
phrases.
ViaVoice Translater is aimed primarily at enterprise users, said
Soares, and runs on iPAQ models H3600, H3700, H3800 and
H3900. Additional memory is recommended to load the language
pairs. It can be downloaded from the IBM Web site or purchased
on CD for US$49.99. Each language pair can be had for $19.99.
While conceding that the software cannot replace a human
translator, Soares said it is 90 percent accurate, with
intelligence to correct grammar and dictionaries for special word
groups, such as medical terminology. It uses phonemes to
translate text to speech and incorporates both machine text
and text-to-speech technologies.
Work in Progress
IBM's machine translation technology also is available through the WebSphere
Translation Server for machine translation for Web pages, documents or instant
messages using Lotus Sametime.
IDC analyst Alex Slawsby, who has tested ViaVoice speech recognition software
on desktop and handheld hardware, said the software works fairly well -- as long as
voice commands are delivered slowly, with careful enunciation. "It is getting better,
but it does not work too well with natural speaking patterns," he told NewsFactor.
"The translation function is an interesting concept, but voice recognition for
handhelds is still in its infancy, and I think we are years away from a truly compelling
application," said Slawsby. "I'm a little skeptical."
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