Oshiete! goo launches goo Shou!
Oshiete! goo launches goo Shou!

NTT Resonant has announced a service aimed initially at Chinese tourists in Japan that will interest business users who struggle with issues over culture and language. The service is part of the Oshiete! goo program and will be called “goo Shuo!” and can be accessed here.

The initial goal of the service is to provide Chinese visitors to Japan, both tourists and business users with a way to ask questions using Simplified Chinese. Questions will be answered by a team of goo Shou! support staff who NTT Resonant says are well versed in Japanese tourism. Whether this means that they are former tour guides or just have access to a wealth of online data is not clear.

What is interesting about this service is that it is not just about tourism. Questions around a range of topics from housing, food, travel, traffic, culture and tradition are all covered by the service. This means that apart from tourists there is a major opportunity here for business users who often find themselves carrying multiple apps on their phones and still worrying about making mistakes.

The first version of the goo Shou! service will cater to Chinese users and only support Simplified Chinese. Interestingly in the press release NTT Resonant says that it will be adding support for English and Traditional Chinese in the first half of 2016. This means that overseas business travellers will get access to the service, something that is to be welcomed and which could help save many travellers from embarrassing cultural errors.

Conclusion

Many a European and US business traveller has come unstuck with the similarities between languages across Japan, China, Vietnam, Korea and other neighbouring countries. The problem is that similar sounding words with just a slight change of intonation can mean very different things and quickly run the risk of creating offence.

While there are other translation apps and services available they are not always reliable and locals will often look puzzled when played what is thought to be the right word or phrase. This service at least offers a human at the other end of the phone who can help travellers avoid the worst embarrassments.

There is a huge demand for this type of service from both tourists and business travellers to Asia. It will be interesting to see of the success of this service leads to NTT Resonant deploying it more widely across Asia by the end of 2016.

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