VW car GPS language apparent translation

[Michael Chare]

When I drive my VW car in France, the GPS speaks to me in English and warns me about obstructions ahead such as "Narrow Lanes" on the motorway. How does the GPS know that there is an obstruction ahead which would be called this in english?

[Pancho]

The same way it does in England? Presumably the GPS has standard codes for road conditions, the GPS software will have translations of these codes into any one of a set of supported languages.

We have been designing software to work like this for decades.

Software Localisation is the term used. Developed originally for text, but easily extended to voice and visuals.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

I'd imagine that its responding to a code which has been standardised so it merely reports it in the language set up on the thing. Brian

[David Wade]

Perhaps because road signs are standardized, and its simply reading the explanation of the sign in your local language.

So whilst there are a few standards, they have a lot in common, so its not rocket science to cater for this.

Contrast this with place names and street names where it has to guess. Listening to mine attempting to pronounce English place names when in Spanish, or listening to google maps struggling over what to be are easy to pronounce Spanish street names (shouldn't it know Calle is pronounced caye) makes me think that artiificial intelligence is much over hyped.

Dave

[Bob Eager]

There's a street near here where I wonder if French satnavs try to sweeten the pill a bit by avoiding it.

It's called "Plains of Waterloo".

[Steve Walker]

It did amuse me for all those years that the Eurostar trains terminated at Waterloo Station.

[Michael Chare]

AIUI the car does not read road sign that us humans can see and perhaps understand, rather it gets warning signals via the 2G or 3G mobile network, which I would think must use some coding scheme so that the car Sat Nav annouce them in whatever local language it is set to work in.

Apparently the UK government wants to use the 2G/3G networks frequencies for 5G (high speed) data transmission. I wonder how this will adversely impact the signals used for car sat navs?

That does appear to be limited to items that can be seen. Can anyone provide a link which explains the signals that are used for Sat Nav systems?

[charles]

According to my car's manual, it does 'read' the signs.

[Snip]

[Andrew]

And all the money spent on the special extra-long platforms and the flyover needed to carry the eurostar tracks over the normal commuter lines was a complete waste of money. Plus the glass roof of the long platforms regularly shattered and there was a legal battle for compo.