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Amid tight competition in a saturated market, KTF hopes to stand out among telecom providers with a service that "translates" dog language into Korean and vice versa. KTF said Thursday it will offer a "dog translation service" for cell phone users starting Friday that translates the noises dogs make into Korean, and translates into dog sounds whatever the owners want to tell their faithful animal companion. The company says the service is not as good as to allow for perfect inter-species dialogue, but it would allow them to exchange basic emotions.
The service took a database of noises and behavior of 55 breeds of dogs compiled in Japan and altered them to suit local conditions. The daily emotions of dogs, for instance, are divided into six major categories like joy, sadness and dissatisfaction, and conveyed as text.
For a translation, users must connect to the wireless Internet with their phone, register their dog's breed, age and sex, and allow the service to listen to the pet for 10 seconds. For example, if the sound is analyzed as meaning "threatened," a message such as "Make my day," "I'm angry," or "Don't come closer" appears on the screen.
By downloading dog noises -- assorted by breed -- on their phone, customers can also convey their own feelings to their pet. If they select, for example, "I'm in a good mood," the phone plays the appropriate yelp to the baffled animal.
The dog translation program can be downloaded from the wireless Internet multipack's "News/Information/Living" corner, or accessed through the wired Internet at Magic N (www.magicn.com). It costs W1,000 (about US$1) to download the program, and W200 per translation. Each dog sound costs W1,000 per download.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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