VOIP provider Jajah has launched a near real-time voice translation service for Mandarin and English speakers. Users can access Jajah Babel with landlines, mobile phones, and even Skype. An automated assistant then prompts for a phrase in one language, checks to see if the system understood correctly, and translates it into the other language. Jajah is promoting the tool as something travellers can use in China, to help them get around or ask questions. IBM Research helped Jajah develop the service.
I am a proficient Mandarin speaker, and decided to try out Jajah Babel to see how it performs. American English to Mandarin worked well for simple phrases such as "how much does this cost?" and "what's your name?" Jajah does have trouble when phrases are spoken quickly -- "can I have your email address?" turned into "do you know the address?" but a second try spoken at a slower and clearer pace was correctly read back and translated.
I noticed that the synthetic Chinese voice sometimes seems clipped compared to the English voices, but the service lets you repeat the phrase if you need to hear it spoken again. Another minor problem occured when I said "I want to go to Zhongshan North Road." The Mandarin translation reversed "north road" and "zhongshan," which might cause confusion for some Chinese people listening to the translation.
The Mandarin to English service was definitely rougher. "How much does this cost?" and "what's your name?" were flawlessly rendered in English, but the Mandarin for "Can you help me go to the airport?" -- while correctly picked up by the system, was translated into English as "Can you help me pick up the airport?" The other problem with Jajah's Mandarin to English service is the English-only prompts, regardless of what source language is selected. Selecting Mandarin probably is an indication that the speaker can't understand English that well, which might make the service difficult for native Mandarin speakers. I was unable to check how the prompts change if the service is used in China -- the Jajah Babel home page only has access numbers for the U.S., the U.K., and Australia.
Still, the service is free (at least in the U.S.) and it only just launched. If you're in Beijing for the Olympics, give it a try (if you can find local access numbers) and let readers here know how it works in the comments section below.
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I tried their number and it appears to be not ready for prime, unless you won't mind getting lost in translation ;-) I've also tried similar service from https://lingpal.com, though not as high tech as it's translated by a live interpreter, I only have positive comments about it nonetheless. Their service is free during the 08 Olympic for registered users. If you will no use the service much and just want to give it a try for comparasion, dial phone numbers on their site, and use this promotional pin -- "Olympic888″ or “6596742888″, which is also free to the public (but if someone else is using it you will have to wait until he/she hangs up).
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