Language-barrier-free room for second life

Abstract

A three-dimensional (3D) online virtual space, such as Second Life, becoming a familiar communication medium is a possibility because of the widespread use of the Internet. Some people view Second Life as the successor of the Internet. However, as in the real world, in the virtual world also language differences pose significant barriers to intercultural communications. We can consider a virtual space to be the simulated environment of a real space. We consider the Language Grid to be the multilingual language environment of the future that can include a variety of language resources. We have developed communication support systems that facilitate multilingual chat in Second Life, called languagebarrier- free rooms. The objective of this study is to develop a communication support system in virtual space that is identical to a system in real space. We will use the findings of the experiment to enhance the communication support systems in real space. From the results of the experiments and those of the trial experiments of the communication systems, we obtained the following result. In virtual space where communication similar to that in the real world can be simulated, we observed that human adjustment of the machine translations is necessary.