New technology will allow a £23 mobile phone chip to receive a digital signal from a special dog collar — a process that will translate barking into human speech. An icon will give some sense of the pet’s mood.

The service will be offered to the Japanese market by the British company Vodafone, but bark-translation has been a national obsession since late last year, when the first so-called BowLingual machines hit the Japanese market.

Coinciding with a sudden boom in Japanese pet ownership, more than 300,000 units have been sold and Takara, the toy company behind the idea, plans to extend the service to cats through a MiaowLingual device.

The BowLingual device picks up growls and barks through a microphone in the dog’s collar unit.

A digital version of the sound is then transmitted to the handset, where it is analysed in seconds against a database of thousands of canine sounds, which, say the Takara dog psychology researchers, consistently appear to have the same meaning.

The concept of bark-translation has been met with some scepticism — a reaction strengthened by the fact that a human saying the word “woof” loudly into the microphone will also receive a translation such as: “You wanna play? I’m ready!” Takara responds by pointing to the considerable time and expertise that has been poured into the product.

To gain a proper sense of how it might work, The Times attached the device to the collar of Charlie, a talkative one-year-old miniature schnauzer, in Tokyo. His owner, Philippe Bouquin, the president of a trading company, had his doubts from the start. “I have a number of friends who have bought this device for their dogs, and I’m really not sure it works that well,” he said. “There was one terrier that, no matter what sort of bark it made, kept producing the translation: ‘I love you.’ ”

Charlie’s initial comments corresponded well with his apparent nervousness at meeting people for the first time. The mood icon explained that he was “On Guard” and, despite his diminutive size, he was coming up with feisty barks that translated as: “Careful who you mess with!” As things progressed, however, the translations became less accurate. Despite Charlie’s evident calmness, the mood icon switched to “Frustrated” and his bark was interpreted as: “That’s not what I want!” despite what sounded like perfectly happy noises.

And, despite the undivided attentions of a small crowd, he repeatedly demanded: “Look at Me!”

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