NTT Com introduces Japanese-Chinese SNS with translator

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NTT Communications has launched a public social networking service with a mutual Japanese-Chinese translating function, timed with the opening of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, People’s Republic of China.

The SNS, named “talk feel”, supports communication based on frank, casual conversations between Japanese and Chinese, going beyond the language barrier. The Japanese-Chinese/Chinese-Japanese machine translating function makes communication possible even between those who only speak their own languages.

The “talk feel” website features a forum where users can post short comments in a casual manner, rather than long sentences like in blogs. This creates new opportunities for Japanese and Chinese users to relate with each other in more meaningful ways. The website also features a Q&A community and distributes the latest news in China to foster deeper, grassroots communication between Chinese and Japanese users of the service.

Free of charge, apart from user packet charges, the “talk feel” website is accessible from Japanese mobile phones as well as from PCs. In the future, NTT Com intends to make talk feel accessible from Chinese mobile phones, and from instant messengers from both countries. Depending on customer needs, the possibilities of adding more compatible languages may be considered.

For the last seven years, NTT Com has been promoting Japan-China exchange with Cafe China, a bilingual web portal that offers news feeds and Mail tsu, a short message service with Japanese-to-Chinese translation function for exchanging text messages between the two countries via mobile phone.