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Open-Source Streaming Translations in Porto Alegre
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."
just use speech recognition software, followed by a translation by Babelfish? It would make all of the speeches humourous, I bet!
It will be able to agree little more I. To the Babelfish it is enormous and it lectures, there is a historian.
(Originally "I couldn't agree more. Babelfish has a history of making terrific speeches.", to Korean and back)
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
Why are most posts trumpeting this like if it was a real-time translation engine? Or is it really???
I think it will be a while before the translation software catches up to reality.
Sure, they'll be able to translate the words, and soon even proper grammar on the fly.
But when, if ever, will you get an automated system that can understand the cultural references made by the primary speaker?
How does this bode for the growth of a language? Many words cross languages. Will this continue if everybody can speak in their native tongue, and no middleground is met?
Just thinking out loud, not pointing out problems...
My mom says I'm cool.
Thank you for taking the time to do one side of the numbers. Judging by the often dubious nature of the materials poked into this site by this man I would paint a far more sinister picture from my own knowledge of the market.
It is easy to imagine every last of his articles to have netted him from $2..5k as a public-relations skunk worker plus an additional per page-impression charge paid by the people he is plugging.
My suspicion that he's a skunk works operator is deepened by the almost 1:1 match of posts here and on his blog.
So I think that the $600 you postulate by counting pennies is naive and that the true value skimmed by this man's insidious use of this site is closer to $10,000.-- per month.
This sort of a budget would then easily justify a $1000.-- paid under the table to tptb for a certain amount of 'tolerance' and 'a blind eye' towards the people here.
Without getting paranoid at all, it's also plausible that there's not a 'bribe' relationship but that management changes have instituted a 'secret' (to us) office-of-product-placement at the parent company which has this person operate with now-typical 'cheat to succeed' (and monetize) attitude of american management. ok, i got cynical there, but you got the picture, yes?
If I could, I would vote for black-listing his blog, for always putting him in a category I can opt-out-of -- lots of other people feel the same way though and nothing has happened yet.
Its just not cool that the details of what surely looks like a $100,000+ skimming con are kept unavailable. And Bah! I get sick just thinking of the last time I accidentally clicked in there!
Slashdot's loosing geek-cred through this guy.