Airport News Japan

Narita Airport Produces Multilingual Speech Translation App for Convenience of Int'l Travelers to Japan

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Top screen of NariTra.

In December of last year, Narita International Airport released an original multilingual speech translation app called NariTra.

Allowing for two-way speech translation between Japanese and three other languages - English, Chinese and Korean - the app is primarily geared toward the foreign travelers who visit the airport, many of them Chinese and Korean, in a bid to offer them improved service. The system employs a multilingual speech translation engine developed by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and its vocabulary contains terms such as proper nouns related to the airport as well as the names of local tourist attractions, stations and products.

Compatible operating systems are iOS 4.0 or better for the iPhone and Android 2.2 or better for Android devices. Each version is available as a free download at the App Store and the Android Market. To use the app, enter the language pair at the title screen. Translations are simultaneously displayed on the screen and produced as sound.

In the prior fiscal year, Narita Airport and the NICT conducted demonstration testing of the multilingual speech translation system at the airport, which led to the development of the new practical app.

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