New Multilingual Megaphone Being Used At Narita Airport

Above, Narita Airport's Terminal One Arrival Lobby. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Leave it to the Japanese to come up with new inventive devices to make life just a little bit easier.

The latest is a megaphone which automatically translates Japanese words into English, Chinese and Korean.

According to the Mainichi Shimbun:

Foreign travelers to Japan who do not speak the language need no longer worry should a disaster occur while they are passing through Narita Airport, thanks to a new translation device being launched by Panasonic Corp. to ensure that information is smoothly relayed in a number of languages. 

Dubbed "Megahonyaku" -- a play on words using a portmanteau of "megaphone" and "honyaku" (which means translation), as "phone" and "hon" have similar pronunciations in Japanese -- the devices were unveiled to the press on Nov. 13 by Narita International Airport Corp., which has begun deploying them on a trial basis.

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