The future of speech-to-speech translation

Abstract

Since English is very different from Japanese in terms of grammar and vocabulary, it is not an easy task (http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty) for a native English speaker to learn Japanese, and vice versa. Only a small number of native Japanese speakers can speak English, and the other way around is less likely. The part of the world where the Japanese language is used is basically limited to Japan. English, known as the “world language,” is not commonly used in Japan and neither are other foreign languages. There is a clear communication barrier between the Japanese and non-natives, and the large need to overcome this became the motivation for researchers in Japan to initiate research on automatic speech-to-speech translation. We have so far briefly looked back on how the state-of-the-art technology was developed, but the following sections will explore some of the near future possibilities of the technology and how it will likely to be utilized in society before and after the year 2020.