Slog Comments
Microsoft Has a Device That Can Translate Your Voice into Another Language, in Almost Real Time
1
No, christians will totally embrace something like this... makes it easier to proselytize to foreigners.
2
Yeah, right. And then the guy you're talking to scratches his head and says "what the fuck are you talking about?" I haven't found translation software yet that doesn't turn out the equivalent of stereo instructions in the other language.
4
In fact, it's so groundbreaking and potentially useful that there's a 99% probability that internal MS corporate politics will crush it like a steamroller over a kitten.
5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel_fish_…
"The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brain wave energy, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting telepathically a matrix formed from the conscious frequencies and nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain, the practical upshot of which is that if you stick one in your ear, you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language: the speech you hear decodes the brain wave matrix."
Yahoo had something by this name.
"The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brain wave energy, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting telepathically a matrix formed from the conscious frequencies and nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain, the practical upshot of which is that if you stick one in your ear, you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language: the speech you hear decodes the brain wave matrix."
Yahoo had something by this name.
9
Yeah, I'm familiar with the current state of Microsoft's translation software, and... the voice quality may be nice, but the content isn't there yet. No criticism! It's an incredibly hard problem, and they're making lots of progress!
11
Microsoft has a tendency to show off products that are years away from reality.
Years away? From reality? Microsoft? Lets make a list of all the earth-shaking new technology that Microsoft research touted at some show, and which actually shipped. And actually worked. And actually shook the earth.
Here, I'll start:
1. uh...
OK. Your turn.
12
@8, Ha! I came here to make a Snow Crash reference, too! Funny (or not, depending on your outlook) how prescient that novel remains.
13
Is this before or after scaling it up like Siri, which worked fine when only a few tech geeks used it, but started getting really slow when the whole world used it?
Beta and alpha don't always mean real world performance. After you install way too many apps, you'd be surprised how slow things get.
Beta and alpha don't always mean real world performance. After you install way too many apps, you'd be surprised how slow things get.
15
@5: From a little further down the same page:
"Meanwhile the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different cultures and races, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."
"Meanwhile the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different cultures and races, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."
17
Paul - can you confirm if the Spanish, Italian or Mandarin versions were accurate? Just because it sounds good to someone who doesn't speak that language, doesn't mean it actually makes sense to a native speaker or is grammatically correct.
18
Yeah, I'm not going to hold my breath. I am someone who likes to play Japanese computer games but only speaks minimal Japanese. As such, I make heavy use of things like Babelfish and Google translate, and let me tell you: those suckers are (more often than not) INCREDIBLY inaccurate.
Until we can get a translating tool that actually translates well, voice features and almost instant "translation" is useless.
Until we can get a translating tool that actually translates well, voice features and almost instant "translation" is useless.
19
@17
Thank you for asking the obvious. "Preserving the accent, timbre, and intonation" may be fine and dandy for making it sound like ME (as if I weren't narcissistic already), but will reduce the translation into gibberish to a native speaker of the other languages.
Why? Well, as an experiment many years ago, I taped myself speaking (okay, it was to my cat, lol) in English, Polish and French. I sounded radically different in each language, because each language is built on different principles of speech formation.
Thank you for asking the obvious. "Preserving the accent, timbre, and intonation" may be fine and dandy for making it sound like ME (as if I weren't narcissistic already), but will reduce the translation into gibberish to a native speaker of the other languages.
Why? Well, as an experiment many years ago, I taped myself speaking (okay, it was to my cat, lol) in English, Polish and French. I sounded radically different in each language, because each language is built on different principles of speech formation.
22
@18 which Japanese? To a Tokyo speaker, people from West Japan have a thick accent, and don't even get me started about the North or the South.
@19 we also learn to speak based on the age of both the teacher and our age when we learn. My voice is very different in Spanish, French, Italian, Latin, and German. The French accent is very Parisian (slightly NE of there), the Italian is more Northern (most people in Trail, BC were from Northern Italy), the German is more High German. I can understand about 8 French dialects well, and 16 English dialects, and maybe 3 Spanish and 4 Italian dialects, but speaking them takes some time. Your mileage may vary.
@19 we also learn to speak based on the age of both the teacher and our age when we learn. My voice is very different in Spanish, French, Italian, Latin, and German. The French accent is very Parisian (slightly NE of there), the Italian is more Northern (most people in Trail, BC were from Northern Italy), the German is more High German. I can understand about 8 French dialects well, and 16 English dialects, and maybe 3 Spanish and 4 Italian dialects, but speaking them takes some time. Your mileage may vary.
23
@22 wha? Do you mean accents? What 16 English dialects do you know? Scottish and northern Canadian? I really just dont know what you mean. I'm actually curious... I speak English, French and Latvian and while there are regional differences, you can still be pretty well understood whatever region you're in.
24
We've had simple versions of these for years.
I found crates of them when I was cleaning out a series of FOBs and COPs.
Would translate simple English language into Pashto and Urdu.
I found crates of them when I was cleaning out a series of FOBs and COPs.
Would translate simple English language into Pashto and Urdu.
25
Yeah, but how frigg'n annoying will it be to have people come and you hear two simultaneous over-lapping voices, one in a foreign language and one in some un-canny valley robot simulation voice.
"Dove รจ la stazione ferroviaria?
WHERE-IS-THE---TRAIN---STATION?"
"Dove รจ la stazione ferroviaria?
WHERE-IS-THE---TRAIN---STATION?"
26
God dammit, the video plugin doesn't work with 64-bit systems. Why can't they use YouTube or something?
27
... except it's in no way translation. It's kinda nifty, but it's a great deal more limited than that. The original reporter was just an uncritical hack.
It takes chinese (or other language text, coded for and read by a chinese speaker, and then replaces phonemes so it sounds like it's being read by an english speaker.
If you wanted to take a firey political speech by a native language speaker, and make it (vaguely) sound like them in another native language, this would be the ticket.
Especially, y'know, if they already sound kinda robotic in their native language.
It takes chinese (or other language text, coded for and read by a chinese speaker, and then replaces phonemes so it sounds like it's being read by an english speaker.
If you wanted to take a firey political speech by a native language speaker, and make it (vaguely) sound like them in another native language, this would be the ticket.
Especially, y'know, if they already sound kinda robotic in their native language.
Comments (27) RSS