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Open-Source Streaming Translations in Porto Alegre

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the babel-fish-danger-alert dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "The World Social Forum (WSF) (choose your language on the site), which ends today in Porto Alegre, Brazil, has less money to spend on computing than the World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Davos, Switzerland. But at both events, many different languages were spoken, meaning that simultaneous translations were an absolute necessity. If the WEF can afford professional translators and costly computers, in Porto Alegre, translators are volunteers, and the software to distribute the translations is open-source. The NIFT (Nomad Interpretation Free Tool) was already used for the 4th WSF held last year in Mumbai, India. The free software, which runs on a simple PC, collects and digitizes the translations from the interpreters before broadcasting them to a variety of devices. In fact, the technically-advanced NIFT allows for real-time streaming over the Internet of speeches in several different languages. This overview contains many links, references and illustrations about the NIFT project."

3 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Tone, nuance, inflection by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 2, Informative
    But when, if ever, will you get an automated system that can understand the cultural references made by the primary speaker?

    Or tone, inflection, nuance, attitude? If we look back to the movie Fail Safe, Larry Hagman as the translator was asked by the President (Henry Fonda) to try to interpret how the Russian was communicating. Is he mad, accepting, furious, tired, drunk, whatever. Things we could not ask a program to deliver.

    How many times have we misinterpreted an IM or other online communication, even though we 'read the words' correctly?

  2. Long time slashdot user by augustz · · Score: 1, Informative

    OK,

    I'm a long time slashdot user with plenty of karma and I normally don't post this type of stuff.

    Roland Piquepaille has been submitting warmed over articles that link to his blog for ages now, and an INCREDIBLE number of them get posted. The usual suspects are timothy and michael (two of the weaker slashdot editors in my opinion).

    The details of all of this I'll leave to others that care more, but it'd be nice to see slashdot get a grip on this. Worth a laugh at this point though.

  3. Interpretation is oral, translation is written by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I'm a simultaneous interpreter and I see this error all the time. Just to make it clear to everybody who are confusing the terms in this thread (including the original poster):
    Interpretation is oral, translation is written.