This is interesting. Information from a tipster that wants to remain anonymous has revealed that work on Bahasa Malaysia support for Siri is now underway.
The tipster claims that work on gathering speech samples in Bahasa Malaysia have been completed sometime before the second half of this year. The samples were collected in Malaysia. The tipster added that the collation of samples for languages in various other countries is going on in as well. However, what the other languages were not specified.
Our informant says that there is no indication of when BM language support will be released.
If this is indeed true then it will certainly increase Siri’s usability in Malaysia but as we’ve discovered, local language support doesn’t mean that Siri is able to offer location-based information. In addition to that, due to the conversational method in which you interact with Siri, it still remains to be seen if the speech recognition software is able to interpret the generally colloquial manner in which Malaysians speak Bahasa Malaysia.
This is critical because Siri can forget about us all speaking proper textbook Bahasa because, let’s be honest here, that’s not going to happen. Many would rather revert to English rather than speak textbook BM to a phone.
So what do you think? Will Siri in BM be useful? Don’t forget to check out our Siri review as well, and if you’ve been waiting for the iPhone 4S to come to Malaysia, keep your browser locked on to SoyaCincau.com for the latest information about the iPhone 4S launch in Malaysia. If twitter is more your thing, we’re there as well, follow us @Soya_Cincau for the freshest servings of mobile tech news, reviews and analysis in Malaysia.
Sekian Terima Kasih.
