NEC Corp. and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology on Wednesday announced that they will begin field testing handheld devices that can translate Japanese, English , Chinese and Korean.
The test will run from Monday through Feb. 21 in Yamanashi Prefecture's tourist region. A total of 350 handsets will be distributed to 29 locations, including hotels and tourist guide centers, where employees will be encouraged to use them to verify whether the translation system helps when responding to foreign visitors.