Equipped with a microphone and a speaker, the English/Japanese translator can recognize and translate Japanese and voice an English version in seconds. The machine looks like a small electronic dictionary.

"Many Japanese people travel abroad but lots have difficulties in communicating ... We want to help them communicate at hotels, stations and airports," a spokesman for NEC Susumu Sakamoto told AFP Friday.

The translating machine has a vocabulary of several thousand words often used in travel conversation and NEC plans to demonstrate the machine, which has yet to be named, at Tokyo's Narita airport in February.

"During the airport demonstration, we will also ask foreign tourists in Japan to use our translator and hope it can make it easier for their travel communication," Sakamoto said.

NEC plans to market the translator by the end of this year but the company has yet to set a price. Electronic dictionaries cost between 20,000 yen and 40,000 yen (188 dollars and 377 dollars).

SPACE.WIRE