One of the toughest things about travelling to Thailand is the language barrier. Even the most confident linguist can get their tongue caught up in knots as they try to work out the tones and nuances of the Thai language.

However, all that may soon be a thing of the past as the Bangkok based National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) has developed an innovative speech-to-speech translation system.

The system is simple; words are spoken into a microphone and are accurately translated into languages such as Thai, Japanese or Korean by a network-based dialogue-to-dialogue translation system.

Chai Wutiwiwatchai is Nectec’s director of Human Language Technology Laboratory. In a recent interview with the Bangkok Post he revealed the wonders of the new machine:

“We can create a database for each specific domain, although at the moment it is tourist industry which is the playground of Thailand. We are developing the Thai-Malay language database and so far there are some 500 pairs of sentences.”

Although still at the development stage, it shouldn’t be long before the dialogue-to-dialogue translation system is widely used throughout Thailand’s tourism industry, allowing hotel staff and tour operators to communicate with travelers easily.