Understanding a New Language...Your Pet's

You think you know what you're pet is saying, but you have no idea. Unless you own a fancy pet translator like Takara's Meowlingual or Bowlingual you'll never really know what all that barking is about. These high-tech toys translate your pet's growls or purrs into human language. 

The Meowlingual cat translator is a device you hold up to your cat to record your cat's meow. It contains 200 possible phrases that are displayed on a built-in LCD. Bowlingual works in a similar way, but it's made up of two pieces. One is a collar holding the translator, and the other is the decoder. Both devices are based on extensive research that analyzed the animal's voice, emotions and body language, so they're not random guesses.

Believe it or not, together these two gadgets sold thousands of units in Asia and the United States. The success of pet translation toys has now lead to a new service by Korea's SK Telecom. New Launches  scoped out a new premium service at the Smart Home Network Show 2006 that allows pet owners to translate their pet's sounds through mobile phones.

You'd basically have to call a number, enter the pet's age, sex and breed through your mobile phone, and connect to a pet translating service center to record your pet's voice for ten seconds before they provide you with a voice analysis.

But this is not all, this pet translating service would also translate human phrases into pet speak. Strange but fun. As always, their success overseas should determine if they will be offered in the U.S., but the site doesn't really say.

I think it would be great if there was computer software you could load to your machine to grab your pet's voice through a microphone to analyze. As well as let you type in a phrase, and translate it for your doggy. Now that I would buy.

What do you think, do you care to understand what your pet is saying?