If you tend to do a whole lot of traveling to far and exotic places whose language you are unable to understand, then you would also know the pain of trying to pronounce street addresses in the local language. If you plan to explore wandering around the city on your own, then be prepared for an unexpected adventure, although smartphone translation apps do help out a fair bit. A couple of designers decided to take things one step further, where Andrew Spitz and Momo Miyazaki developed the “WTPh? What the Phonics” interactive installation that functions as a proof of concept for international tourist areas.

The proof of concept consists of a series of streets signs that come with the audio of a local pronouncing the word on the sign. Not only that, the signs will also show a light on top of individual syllables as it is being spoken, similar to how that bouncing ball on karaoke videos work. Good luck with non-Romanized languages such as Arabic and Chinese!

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