CHINA

Device Transforms Spoken Mandarin Into Text: The computer, called the Apple Chinese Dictation Kit, can recognize up to 350,000 Mandarin phrases. It is Apple Computer Inc.’s first product “designed in Asia, for Asia, by Asians,” according to Louis Woo, director of the Apple Design Center in Singapore. Once the system is trained to recognize a specific individual’s voice, it will process text five times faster than possible with a keyboard, Woo said. Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple has less than 5% of China’s personal computer market.