The inter­na­tional infant and chil­dren toy man­u­fac­turer, Takara Tomy, have released their improved ver­sion of Bowlin­gual. Believe it or not, it’s a device that trans­late the bow-wows of your dog into human lan­guage, so far only in Japan­ese. One part is strapped around like a dog col­lar to detect the vibra­tions of the dog’s lar­ynx and the other, a hand held device, dis­plays and vocalises the trans­lated barks. My scep­ti­cal opin­ions remains only because there’s no chance of know­ing the accu­racy of this trans­la­tor. Is that why it doesn’t trans­late Japan­ese back into the bow-wows? It would be an unde­mand­ing task for it already has the lex­i­con data­base. We could care­fully annun­ci­ate our mes­sage into the hand held device, select the cor­rect vari­ants on the screen if there are any and it plays back the bark­ing to the dog. Woof, Bob’s your uncle. And how would this prod­uct rate in Korea? Would we want to speak to our meal? And once Meowlin­gual, Oin­klin­gual, Baalin­gual and Moolin­gual is out there, would we all become vegetarians?

The Bowlin­gual TVC