Trust our ever-reliable chums in Japan to come up with the boon to our blues.

If you have a dog as a pet, you will be pleased to hear that you may soon be blessed with the abilities of Doctor Doolittle or at the very least, that of the Universal Translator deployed to such good effect in the Star Trek TV series.

The Takara Corporation has invented a translation device which converts the various barks, howls, growls and whines of your furry amigo into the human language.

The gadget is called Bow-lingual, and is hitting the market in early February 2001 - sadly too late for Christmas. For about $130, you will be able to attach the Trek-like device to your dog's collar, and hear it translate doggy speak into such useful phrases as :

"This is really fun, I love it"

"More food please"

"This is boring."

"Please stroke me, I need to feel loved."

"I can't take much more of this."

"Hey, I need a walk."

Apparently, Takara scientist have researched 2000 different doggy phrases over three years of studying 100 different dogs from 14 breeds.

Using the latest A.I neural network analysis tools, Takara broke the rudiments of canine communication into such emotional categories as happiness, boredom, sadness and anger, then cross referenced these into more than 200 words and 100 phrases which can be converted through the Bow-lingual voice analyzer and displayed on a screen.

A feline version for those of you that prefer a chat with a cat is now being developed at the drawing board stage, although apparently there is more variety in feline dialects than in their simpler dog cousins, so this may be harder to accomplish.

Takara, are, of course, the people who brought you such great toys as "Let's Beer Great", "Rika-chan's 5th generation Sunshine Mama" and "Humanoid Robot Dream Force 01".

Hmmm. Nice.

Let's hope that 'Let's Beer Great' ends up underneath my Christmas tree this year.

Here's what their PR gonks had to say when we contacted them:

“Voice Converter” is a function that converts the emotion into one of six different categories, which includes 200 phrases or words.

The phrases/words are randomly chosen within the same emotion category, for example when the voiceprint has been judged to be in the “Frustration” category, the words such as “I've had enough!," “I can’t take much more of this!” or “You’re ticking me off!” will be chosen; in the “Fun” department, “This is fun!”, “I’m happy” or “Oh yeah!”; and in the order of “Sad”, something like, “I’m bored!” or “ I’m sad,” will be chosen.

The "Data Analyzer” scrutinizes the dog’s voice patterns which are accumulated for a certain amount of time into three different modes: Happiness Level Diagnosis, Bow Wow Diary and Friendly Level Diagnosis. Happiness level diagnosis expresses the levels of a dog’s assertion, satisfaction, frustration, and aggressiveness from one to five stars, and describes the dogs feelings from 100 different sentence possibilities.

The analyzed emotions are expressed in terms that are easy to understand, for example: “I’m a little bored, let’s play!” or “Please, please! If you won’t let me, I’ll whine.” “Bow Wow Diary” judges the accumulated emotional data that has been converted from the morning, afternoon and evening of a particular day and combines all data as a diary (125,000 different combinations).

100 different variations of the diary are provided for the owner. Even if one has to leave a lovely dog alone at home for an entire day, you are able to know how your dog's day went by looking at its “Bow Wow Diary”, which will show something like “I had a great time playing with the tennis ball. "Today was a happy day!” or “It was so boring, nothing special happened.”

“Friendly Level Diagnosis” determines how your dogs likes or dislikes other dogs by sorting accumulated data into affection and animosity, scoring the result out of a possible 100 points.

In addition to the aforementioned functions, BOWLINGUAL is equipped with a dictionary-like function that analyzes a dog’s gestures. When the owner registers a certain gesture, an analyzed diagnosis of that gesture appears in the portable main unit and a voice comes out of the speakers.

For future expansion of the product, we are currently developing “BOWLINGUAL MAIL” which delivers a dog’s message via the Internet!, a product equipped with a system that is being planned and developed with INDEX Corporation.

This product will realize a new style of communication between humans and dogs. An indoor robot, the “DR-01,” equipped with an emotion analysis system that can translate a dog’s voice patterns, is also currently being developed. In the stressful society that we live in, animals play a big roll of being man's (and sometimes woman's) best friend and provides some healing effects and a touch of gentleness."

If you can read Kanj, then surf on over to Takara in Japan for more details.