My Roomba, 丸さん, got lost somehow trying to make it back to his charging station yesterday so he inevitably gave up and asked for my help. As I approached 丸さん I tapped the glowing red button on top of him out of curiosity and then he said a phrase to me! I only could pick out the end but thought it would be fun to fully figure out what he was trying to tell me. I recorded the message and began typing out what I heard. Once I got something semi-close I fired up ChatGPT for translation assistance. Amazing how helpful that tool is and when you give it more context it just keeps understanding more. We finally settled on these two sentences that were being said:
バッテリー残容量が低下しています。充電してください。
Basically is says the battery’s remaining capacity is decreasing and needs to be recharged. A difficult problem was figuring out 残容量 (ざんよりょ). I kept hearing it as just さんりょwhich doesn’t appear to be an actual word. ChatGPT said that perhaps the robot is saying that word a bit differently than expected. I think that’s probably the reason and will maybe fully understand more one day. Maybe it some sort of dialect (方言) thing.
Anyhow, fun exercise and I’ll leave you with a picture of sleeping 丸さん.
またね！
