marvelharvey
Member
(sorry for any spelling mistakes)
OK, this was suppossed to be MY killer app for the PSP. It`s odd, I`ve been waiting for months for this to be released, but never really knew anything about it except that it would help with my Japanese homework! So I appologise if I start stating what has been common knowledge for years.
First chance I got to play Talkman was a 20 minute demo at TGS, initailly I was hugely dissappointed since everything I said was mistranslated or misunderstood. Anyway, after a few minutes I realised that you couldn`t just blabber anything into the mic and hope that the internal babelfish-processor would convert into Japanese. You have to work with it. Basically, the disc has a set number of phrases, maybe 2000 or so, divided into a few sub catorgories like `greetings`, `shopping`, `hotel`, `train`, `nightlife` etc. And each phrase has been translated into 4 languages, English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean.
So, you pick sub a catagory, and then start speaking to Max (the parrot), he then tries to match your phrase with one on the UMD, a list of possible phrases then appear on the screen and you choose the appropriate one and finally Max translates it into whatever language you need (of the 4) in both voice and onscreen text.
At most, Talkman is basically like a holiday phrase book that will help you order food, book hotels, communicate with doctors if in need of medical treatment and lots of other basic phrases, But you`ll never be holding any conversations with anyone.
However, even though it`s a great help, the whole process is slow for 2 reasons... disk access is the usual PSP affair, sometimes a few seconds wait to find a phrase and more importantly, there is lots of trial and error as you have to guess the what the Talkman designers have written for the line you want. For example, you might want to ask
"Do you have this in a bigger size"
and Max will be all confused, unable to help, but then ask
"Do you have this in a larger size"
and Max will find the phrase "Do you have this in a large" - close enough. Anyway I kept finding myself rethinking phrases until Max finally matched it in his database. While I know it`s not possible to have millions of permutations of all possible phrases, it`s just a thorn in my side on most occassions.
That is until I found the `crib note` page. When you press R, you`re taken to the crib note page where a list of ALL phrases with in the current subcatagory are listed. This is much quicker to use and you can quickly identify the words you want and have Max translate the sentence with no need to constantly talk into the mic. However, this kind of takes away the whole reason for Talkman, this Mic is the best bit!
Hmm, sorry, I seem to have been a little negative so far, but I just want to asure you that this niggles aside, it`s a great tool for English speaking travellers coming to the Far East (and vice versa). I`m just one of those people that usually focuses on the negative side of things.
Next up, there are some games. 2 unlocked to begin with and another 2 empty game slots that I assume will have some more games added in the future when I`ve done some work. Currently I have `pronounciation` and `listening` available. Here, Max will test me on my skills in any of the onboard languages... I ACED the English test by the way
Max speaks a random phrase (you can control the difficulty) and you do your best to match it, then you get a grade. The listening test is far too easy, Max says 4-8 sentences, then repeats one of the 4-8 phrases again and you have to choose from a list of 4 which one you think he spoke. Anyway, the phrases are quite dissimilar and they`re too easy to distinguish between.
Right, I`ll leave it at that for now, I`m only 2 hours in and I`m having lots of fun just doing nothing (in that typical non-game way) and I off to do the harder tests! And just to reiterate, it`s a fun tool that will really come in handy on your travels. I`m hoping more versions get released as I need to brush up on my French and Spanish.
OK, this was suppossed to be MY killer app for the PSP. It`s odd, I`ve been waiting for months for this to be released, but never really knew anything about it except that it would help with my Japanese homework! So I appologise if I start stating what has been common knowledge for years.
First chance I got to play Talkman was a 20 minute demo at TGS, initailly I was hugely dissappointed since everything I said was mistranslated or misunderstood. Anyway, after a few minutes I realised that you couldn`t just blabber anything into the mic and hope that the internal babelfish-processor would convert into Japanese. You have to work with it. Basically, the disc has a set number of phrases, maybe 2000 or so, divided into a few sub catorgories like `greetings`, `shopping`, `hotel`, `train`, `nightlife` etc. And each phrase has been translated into 4 languages, English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean.
So, you pick sub a catagory, and then start speaking to Max (the parrot), he then tries to match your phrase with one on the UMD, a list of possible phrases then appear on the screen and you choose the appropriate one and finally Max translates it into whatever language you need (of the 4) in both voice and onscreen text.
At most, Talkman is basically like a holiday phrase book that will help you order food, book hotels, communicate with doctors if in need of medical treatment and lots of other basic phrases, But you`ll never be holding any conversations with anyone.
However, even though it`s a great help, the whole process is slow for 2 reasons... disk access is the usual PSP affair, sometimes a few seconds wait to find a phrase and more importantly, there is lots of trial and error as you have to guess the what the Talkman designers have written for the line you want. For example, you might want to ask
"Do you have this in a bigger size"
and Max will be all confused, unable to help, but then ask
"Do you have this in a larger size"
and Max will find the phrase "Do you have this in a large" - close enough. Anyway I kept finding myself rethinking phrases until Max finally matched it in his database. While I know it`s not possible to have millions of permutations of all possible phrases, it`s just a thorn in my side on most occassions.
That is until I found the `crib note` page. When you press R, you`re taken to the crib note page where a list of ALL phrases with in the current subcatagory are listed. This is much quicker to use and you can quickly identify the words you want and have Max translate the sentence with no need to constantly talk into the mic. However, this kind of takes away the whole reason for Talkman, this Mic is the best bit!
Hmm, sorry, I seem to have been a little negative so far, but I just want to asure you that this niggles aside, it`s a great tool for English speaking travellers coming to the Far East (and vice versa). I`m just one of those people that usually focuses on the negative side of things.
Next up, there are some games. 2 unlocked to begin with and another 2 empty game slots that I assume will have some more games added in the future when I`ve done some work. Currently I have `pronounciation` and `listening` available. Here, Max will test me on my skills in any of the onboard languages... I ACED the English test by the way
Max speaks a random phrase (you can control the difficulty) and you do your best to match it, then you get a grade. The listening test is far too easy, Max says 4-8 sentences, then repeats one of the 4-8 phrases again and you have to choose from a list of 4 which one you think he spoke. Anyway, the phrases are quite dissimilar and they`re too easy to distinguish between. Right, I`ll leave it at that for now, I`m only 2 hours in and I`m having lots of fun just doing nothing (in that typical non-game way) and I off to do the harder tests! And just to reiterate, it`s a fun tool that will really come in handy on your travels. I`m hoping more versions get released as I need to brush up on my French and Spanish.
!!