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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."
From TFA:
[M]any 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.
This is fantastic, and will be a good selling point for open source software around the world. Many countries in this world have two official languages, or at least want their mechanisms of government to be accessible. Some enterprising young bureaucrat should pitch this. Canada, for example, makes extensive use of translation technology - I was in Ottawa for a conference, and we made use of it as we could not all speak French. Hopefully, this can hold true in most countries.
This just helps somebody make a pitch for Open Source, by being able to go 'did you know, [insert high bureaucrat's name], we can even do this with open source software - not to mention Openoffice, Linux, Mozilla, etc.'
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
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.
Can anyone tell me what, exactly, this sentence is trying to express?
Thanks...
I know this isn't the place for the spelling nazi, but the comment is about grammar. You would think that it would at least use correct spelling.
Example: "Correct grammar"
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)
Taiwanese interpreter: (in english) "we unholy communist dogs will kill you all"
The reason that interpreters are so highly paid is because they are vetted professionals that will not lose anything in translation. Their livelihood is dependant on their integrity.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Make him an editor, so people can block him. (cf. JonKatz.)
sulli
RTFJ.
and yet another dodge of the cowardly slashdot "editing" staff in their failure to even admit some sort of relationship between them and (plagarism-guilty) Roland. Hey Taco and crew, have you got ANY sense of ethics? Either you guys have some sort of agreement, or your "editing" staff is as incometent as all the trolls say (and the way things are going, the trolls are more believable than OSTG....)
Was I the only one who was reading this sentence expecting it to end with "held in Davos, Switzerland, spends on catering"?
--Joakim Ziegler
um while it seems a good idea at first, there are problems, languages are more than just equivilent ways of representing the same thing.
for example in japanese the choice of word for you actually denotes how you view the relationship between you and the other person and how they view you.
Languages also express different ways of thinking about the world and more importantly reflect the culture of the people using it. Even english a common language to most readers of slashdot, is localised to a greater or lesser extent.
A monolingual world wouldnt be an improvement, However if you really meant to say everyone should learn to speak at least a second language then i would agree because in learning your second language you will enjoy empathy with speakers of this language and your life will be enriched as a result.
we have diversity in every other aspect of our life why should we limit ourselves to one language
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Karma be damned - mod me down. Slashdot is usually scrupulous about disclosing any time an article deals with OSDN or another affiliate. I have no idea how many current members there are here but I have to think that the chances are pretty slim that RP is submitting about 15% of all stories. Why does he get such a disproportionately high number of submissions published, all trying to drive traffic to his blog?
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
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.
Roland Piquepaille and Slashdot: Is there a connection?
I think most of you are aware of the controversy surrounding regular Slashdot article submitter Roland Piquepaille. For those of you who don't know, please allow me to bring forth all the facts. Roland Piquepaille has an online journal (I refuse to use the word "blog") located at www.primidi.com. It is titled "Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends". It consists almost entirely of content, both text and pictures, taken from reputable news websites and online technical journals. He does give credit to the other websites, but it wasn't always so. Only after many complaints were raised by the Slashdot readership did he start giving credit where credit was due. However, this is not what the controversy is about.
Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends serves online advertisements through a service called Blogads, located at www.blogads.com. Blogads is not your traditional online advertiser; rather than base payments on click-throughs, Blogads pays a flat fee based on the level of traffic your online journal generates. This way Blogads can guarantee that an advertisement on a particular online journal will reach a particular number of users. So advertisements on high traffic online journals are appropriately more expensive to buy, but the advertisement is guaranteed to be seen by a large amount of people. This, in turn, encourages people like Roland Piquepaille to try their best to increase traffic to their journals in order to increase the going rates for advertisements on their web pages. But advertisers do have some flexibility. Blogads serves two classes of advertisements. The premium ad space that is seen at the top of the web page by all viewers is reserved for "Special Advertisers"; it holds only one advertisement. The secondary ad space is located near the bottom half of the page, so that the user must scroll down the window to see it. This space can contain up to four advertisements and is reserved for regular advertisers, or just "Advertisers".
Before we talk about money, let's talk about the service that Roland Piquepaille provides in his journal. He goes out and looks for interesting articles about new and emerging technologies. He provides a very brief overview of the articles, then copies a few choice paragraphs and the occasional picture from each article and puts them up on his web page. Finally, he adds a minimal amount of original content between the copied-and-pasted text in an effort to make the journal entry coherent and appear to add value to the original articles. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now let's talk about money.
Visit http://www.blogads.com/qjrvfopptgs/premiumpiquepai lle/advertise to check the following facts for yourself. As of today, the going rate for the premium advertisement space on Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends is $375 for one month. One of the four standard advertisements costs $150 for one month. So, the maximum advertising space brings in $375 x 1 + $150 x 4 = $975 for one month. Obviously not all $975 will go directly to Roland Piquepaille, as Blogads gets a portion of that as a service fee, but he will receive the majority of it. According to the FAQ, Blogads takes 20%. So Roland Piquepaille gets 80% of $975, a maximum of $780 each month. www.primidi.com is hosted by clara.net. Browsing clara.net's hosting solutions, the most expensive hosting service is their Clarahost Advanced, priced at 69.99 GBP. This is roughly, at the time of this writing, $130 USD. Assuming Roland Piquepaille pays for the Clarahost Advanced hosting service, he is out $130 leaving him with a maximum net profit of $650 each month. Keeping your website registered with Network Solutions cost $34.99 per year, or about $3 per month. This leaves Roland Piquepaille with $647 each month. He m
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?