Electronic apparatus for translating one language into another

An electronic apparatus has a first memory storing therein a plurality of data comprising a first lingual words and a second lingual words corresponding respectively thereto, and a second memory for storing information to freely read out at least one of said plurality of data stored in the first memory. The apparatus further has means for reading out the information stored in the second memory and reading out, on the basis of the information read out, the second lingual word relating thereto from the first memory.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
1. Field of the Invention 
This invention relates to an electronic apparatus suited to aid a user in 
memorizing and learning information forming a pair of data, for example, 
words of one language and their Japanese equivalents. 
2. Description of the Prior Art 
Word cards have heretofore been used by students to learn and memorize 
information forming a pair of data, for example, words of one language and 
their Japanese equivalents. In a more or less advanced stage of learning, 
it is often the case that at a glance at a word of the one language, the 
student can remember its Japanese equivalent. But often some words are 
difficult to remember and in such cases, it has been common practice to 
pick out cards bearing difficult words and have the student specially and 
deliberately review these words, thereby enhancing the learning 
efficiency. 
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
It is an object of the present invention to provide an electronic apparatus 
for aiding a student in memorizing and learning which performs such a 
function. 
It is another object of the present invention to provide an electronic 
apparatus designed such that particularly important information or 
information that is desired to be preserved for review can be stored in a 
special memory. 
It is still another object of the present invention to provide an 
electronic apparatus having a first memory storing therein a plurality of 
bits of information, a second memory for selectively storing therein some 
of said plurality of bits of information stored in the first memory, and 
means for reading out the contents of said second memory. 
It is yet still another object of the present invention to provide an 
electronic apparatus having a first memory storing therein a plurality of 
data comprising first words in one language and second words in a second 
language corresponding respectively to the first words, a second memory 
for storing information for freely reading out at least one of the 
plurality of data stored in said first memory, and means for reading out 
the information stored in said second memory and further reading out, on 
the basis of the information read out, the second word relating thereto 
from said first memory. 
The invention will become more fully apparent from the following detailed 
description thereof taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
In describing the embodiments of the present invention, English is taken as 
a first language and Japanese as a second language. Of course, the concept 
of the present invention is applicable for other languages. 
The present invention will hereinafter be described with reference to the 
drawings. 
In FIG. 1, which shows an embodiment of the present invention, a ROM is a 
read-only memory, e.g., fixed memory. At each address AD of the fixed 
memory ROM, there are stored a plurality of binary codes EGW (constituting 
first information) corresponding to English words and a plurality of 
binary codes JPW (constituting second information) corresponding to 
Japanese words respectively equivalent to the English words. X designates 
a key signal generator that may comprise a plurality of keys for causing 
an English word and its Japanese equivalent to be read out from the fixed 
memory ROM thereby permitting the English and equivalent Japanese words to 
be displayed. INP denotes other key group comprising a plurality of keys 
for instructimg the apparatus to perform various functions as hereinafter 
described. CPU designates a central processing unit which receives the 
input signal from the key X signal generator designating the English and 
equivalent Japanese words to be studied. The CPU then delivers an address 
signal to the address AD of ROM corresponding to the designated words to 
be studied through a signal line l1 on the basis of the key signal input 
from the key signal generator, and receives back from the ROM a binary 
code EGW corresponding to the English word stored at the address 
designated, through a signal line l2, and a binary code JPW corresponding 
to the Japanese word equivalent to the English word, through a signal line 
l3. 
The central processing unit CPU first delivers the designated binary code 
EGW to a display device DIS, which displays the corresponding English word 
in ordinary characters. By operating a specific one of the instruction 
keys in the key group INP, it is also possible to have the Japanese 
equivalent word displayed on the display device DIS. Further, the central 
processing unit CPU may receive information from a RAM, to be described 
hereinafter, on a signal line l4, to be delivered to the display device 
DIS. At the same time, to coordinate this RAM information with the 
corresponding English word represented by the code EGW, the addresses AD 
in the address portion of ROM are successively addressed until the English 
word code EGW corresponding to the RAM information delivered to the CPU on 
signal line l4 is located. Then the corresponding Japanese word code JPW 
is introduced to the CPU from ROM through the signal line l3. The RAM is a 
memory which is capable of having data written thereinto and read 
thereoutof, such as, for example, a random access memory. The RAM is 
particularly useful for memorizing specific information relating to the 
languages which the student especially wishes to learn or review. For 
example, it is to be understood that the RAM writes or reads out a 
plurality of English words successively in a stack form. 
Y is a key for selectably causing information to be written into the memory 
RAM. With this write key Y, a write instruction is delivered to the 
pointer PT of the memory RAM, to selectively address successive addresses 
therein through a signal line l5 into which data is to be written. The Y 
key output is also supplied to an AND gate G1 along with the EGW output on 
line l2 from the fixed memory device ROM, so that the EGW code read out at 
the time of the write instruction is also delivered into the data section 
DA of the memory RAM to the address then selected by the pointer PT 
through a signal line l6. 
Z designates the read-out key for the memory RAM. The key output thereof is 
supplied to the pointer PT of RAM through a signal line l7 and is also 
supplied to an AND gate G2. This AND gate G2 is also supplied with the 
data output DAO from RAM, and the data output DAO, read out from RAM at 
the time the Z key is actuated, is supplied to the central processing unit 
CPU through the signal line l4, as described above. 
Operation will not be described. Assume that the student has operated the 
key signal generator INP and the display key X to designate an English 
word, for example, "PATENT" for display and has operated the appropriate 
key in the group INP to cause the English word to be displayed on the 
display DIS. The word "PATENT" is then read out from the memory ROM in 
accordance with the address determined by CPU. Here, the student may or 
may not wish to look at the Japanese equivalent of the designated English 
word. If the student wants to look at the Japanese equivalent, he or she 
may operate the appropriate key of the group INP to cause the Japanese 
equivalent to be displayed on the display device DIS. When the student 
thinks it will be necessary or desirable to review the word "PATENT" at a 
later time, he or she depresses the write key Y while that word is being 
read out from the ROM. When the key Y has been depressed, the data at the 
address of the ROM being delivered to the CPU remains unchanged but at 
that time, the code EGW representing the English word "PATENT" entered 
through the signal line l2 to the CPU is also delivered into the data 
portion DA of the random access memory RAM through the AND gate G1. 
Furthermore, by operation of the Y key signal, the pointer PT of RAM is 
varied by +1 to address the next successing address of the data portion DA 
either before or after the information on the word "PATENT" has been 
written into the RAM. Thus, EGW codes are successively written into this 
RAM in a stack form as the write key Y is actuated. 
Thereafter, each time the student depresses the key Z during the later 
review as desired, the EGW codes successively written into the data 
section DA of RAM are successively delivered in stack form to CPU through 
the AND gate G2 and signal line l4 and are successively displayed on the 
display device DIS. More particularly, with each operation of the key Z, 
-1 is applied to the pointer PT of RAM to successively inspect each 
address therein in descending order. At the time he or she reaches the 
word "PATENT", if he or she wants to look at the Japanese equivalent of 
the English word "PATENT", he or she may operate the specific key of the 
key group INP already described to change the display from the English 
word to the Japanese equivalent since both are supplied to the CPU from 
the ROM. This thus causes the Japanese equivalent " " of "PATENT" to be 
displayed on the display device DIS. 
It is also possible to operate the write key Y to thereby cause the code 
EGW for an English word and the corresponding code JPW for the 
corresponding Japanese word to be memorized in the form of a pair of data 
by the data section DA of RAM, or to operate the key Y to cause the 
address AD of ROM addressed at a particular time to be memorized by RAM. 
When the read-out key Z is operated in this latter case the ROM address 
written into the data section DA of RAM would then be read out to cause 
the content of this ROM address to be delivered from ROM to CPU and 
displayed on the display device DIS as described above. Also, in case 
where it is necessary for a word not memorized by ROM to be entered into 
RAM by the key group INP, such INP output may be supplied to an OR gate 
with the output of the AND gate G1 and the OR output may be transferred to 
the data section DA of the memory RAM through a signal line l6. 
The memory capacity of the ROM may be, for example, 128-kilobits which can 
accommodate one thousand English words. The RAM may be one having capacity 
sufficient to memorize ten to thirty English words. These capacities can 
provide an apparatus very useful for successful learning of languages. In 
the foregoing description, the form of English-Japanese translation has 
been adopted, but learning in the form of Japanese-English translation 
could be easily provided for by interchanging the codes EGW and JPW with 
each other in the ROM. 
As has been described above, the present invention has the effect of 
enabling one to efficiently memorize and learn a foreign language. 
In the above-described embodiment, information is communicated to the 
student by use of visual display means. But as shown in FIG. 2, the 
display means may be replaced by a memory ROM1 which has stored therein 
quantized pronunciation of words and with the information read out from 
the fixed memory device ROM as addressed, the pronunciation of each word 
is accessed from said memory ROM1 and supplied to a speaker SP. Therefore 
it is possible to obtain a voice output instead of visual display. It will 
be realized that in the embodiment as shown in FIG. 2, the same components 
as those of FIG. 1 are designated by the same reference numerals and 
function in the same manner.