Jajah's English/Mandarin translations: Quirky, but works for simple phrases

Ian Lamont — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:31:52 -0400

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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