There's nothing more embarrassing than standing in the tastefully decorated lobby of a Japanese hotel, fumbling with an English-to-Japanese dictionary and blurting out, "Your mother was a hamster," when you actually meant to ask for one of those teensy packets of shampoo. Language barriers are tough to overcome, much more so than dandruff.Luckily, portable consoles can provide a much-needed grappling hook for scaling these wordy walls swathed in obscure grammatical graffiti. Much in the same vein as Sony's own PSP Talkman software, Tabi no Yubisashi Kaiwachou (which either translates to Conversation Notebook for Travelers...or Archaic Speech Patsy for Eels) turns the DS into a fully functional interpreter that translates text, outputs audio samples and generally helps to prevent uncomfortable international incidents. The supported languages are Thai, Chinese, Korean, American English and German, each one released as a seperate volume and accompanied by its own obscenely adorable multilingual mascot. American English is represented by a surprisingly friendly bear, if you must know.
Though Tabi no Yubisashi Kaiwachou was originally slated for a March release, it is now scheduled to hit Japan at the end of this month.
[Thanks, Siliconera!]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-12-2006 @ 8:29PM
Nushio said...
I wonder how good this software is, to warrant an import.
If I can put the menus on japanese, and it features "english to japanese" alongside the obvious japanese to english, I might have to get myself a copy, after all, I do plan on going to Japan soon.
I wish it had more common languajes, such as french and spanish though.
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4-12-2006 @ 9:42PM
mike said...
hehe.. funny dictionary.. looks alot like my CHINESE english dictionary..
guess it's cuz there's just tons of chinese characters in there.. hrm
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4-13-2006 @ 10:42AM
Gonzo said...
I'd import the English one if I can use it to learn Japanese; does it work backwards & forwards? Then again, if it's at all good, they'll probably make it for the US too. I really didn't think they'd try to market Brain Games here but I'm glad I was wrong about that one.
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4-13-2006 @ 3:40PM
Haruhinda said...
Oouu... I guess I don't need to use subs now, I'll just let my DS interpret my anime raws! XD
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4-13-2006 @ 8:57PM
idioteraser said...
Considering the English Training nongame for the DS is a huge seller in Japan I can see this also doing a respectable number of sales. I wonder if they will do a version of it for the states. Along with the cookbook nongame and travel guides the DS is looking to captivate on the Brain Training buyers who are largely people in the 40s and up who are nongamers.
The psp is patheticaly trying to capture the nongamers but is failing miserbly.
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4-16-2006 @ 8:06PM
Probot said...
Your mother was a hamster:
anatano okaasanha hamusutaa deshita.
あなたのおかあさんはハムスターでした。
Are there any small shampoos:
chisai shyanpuo arimasuka.
ちさいシャンプーがありますか。
As you can see, they are pretty difficult to confuse.
My Japanese is pretty bad, so that may not be correct. I should also point out that I don't understand the concept of humor.
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