Bowlingual in the News

Bow, Wow!
Device Translates Barks Into Words
Thursday, August 14, 2003

TOKYO

Kimiko Fukuda always wondered what her Chihuahua was trying to say. Whenever she tried to put on makeup, the small dog would pull on her sleeve.

Now, she said, she knows. When her dog barks, she glances at a palm-sized electronic gadget. On its screen comes the "human" translation: "Please take me with you."

"I realized that's how he was feeling," says Fukuda, who lives outside Tokyo.

The gadget is called Bowlingual, and it translates dog barks into feelings. It can make a human feel like Dr. Dolittle.

When a Japanese toymaker, Takara Co. Ltd., made the world's first dog-human translation machine last year, people laughed. But Japanese dog owners bought it. And starting tomorrow, Bowlingual will be sold in stores in the United States. There's a good chance that American dog owners will buy it. Last year, Americans spent nearly $30 billion on their dogs.

"Nobody else had thought about such a silly thing," said Masahiko Kajita, who works for Takara.

The company makes toys for children, but, because there are fewer children in Japan, the company is now aiming at adults -- and animals. With nearly 6 million dogs kept as pets in Japan, Bowlingual seemed a natural invention. Takara created the device with the help of Japan Acoustic Laboratory, a private company that specializes in studying voices.

When a visitor went to Fukuda's house recently, Chacha-maru, Fukuda's dog, barked a high-pitched "bowwow." On Bowlingual's screen flashed the translation: "Don't come this way."

Then Chacha-maru introduced himself by sniffing the visitor's scarf, grabbing it in his teeth and growling, "I'm stronger than you."

Later, likely bored, the dog looked into Fukuda's eyes, and whined, "I feel lonesome."

To make Bowlingual, the lab collected the tapes of "voices" from 2,000 dogs and found patterns that changed with emotions. A microphone attached to a dog's collar carries the dog's voice wirelessly to the gadget, which can be held like a walkie-talkie. It analyzes the sound of a dog's bark and puts it into one of six feelings: frustration, menace, demand, joy, sorrow and self-expression.

The machine then picks an expression that represents that feeling. It can choose from 200 words in its database. The machine is supposed to work for more than 50 dogs, from Chihuahuas to German shepherds. (Good news for cat lovers: Meowlingual should be available in November, Takara says.)

But does the $120 gadget really work, or is it just a toy?

Fukuda says Bowlingual's Japanese translation seems perfect sometimes -- and other times is totally wrong.

Yoko Watanabe, who works for the company that makes Bowlingual, admits there may be some room for other interpretation in the translations.

"We can't say it's 100 percent," said Watanabe. "You can't really understand how a dog feels unless you become one yourself."

-- Sachiko Sakamaki

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55846-2003Aug13.html
© 2003 The Washington Post Company