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Can Your Mouth Become Multilingual?
Roland Piquepaille writes "During a videoconference last week between Karlsruhe, Germany, and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, USA, the talk of Alex Waibel, from CMU, was automatically translated in German and Spanish. Both the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PPG) and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (PTR) attended the conference, took pictures and were impressed by this new 'open domain' speech-to-speech translation. This new computer technology is based on artificial intelligence (AI) and statistical methods. During the demonstration, the speaker had electrodes attached to his face and his neck, but the researchers think that these electrodes could be implanted into your mouth and your throat in a decade from now -- if you agree of course."
"This is a bit of science fiction," said Alex Waibel, director of the International Center for Advanced Communications Technologies, "but it is a vision that we think is very exciting." This is a vision they are having. It is the first step of a process that they achieved. They don't have a product out that you can try for yourself. They aren't even saying it is ready for the real world. They simply were able to translate muscle movement from your mouth into real words. Just like any other technology, they have reached their prototype. I'm not sure where exactly you think they "finally cracked the problem of machine translation".
I am currently taking a great course on the Introduction of Linguistists. I have been exposed to the rather complex process a human being uses to make a sound (phoneme). You can go here to get a good idea of what it truly entails http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Linguistics-and-Philosop hy/24-900Spring-2005/CourseHome/index.htm
The main obstacles to this is the fact each langauge uses different places and manners of articulation as well as the fact that intonation can change the meaning of a word. In Mandarin the word ma can change meaning based on tone.
This is not a factor in English but certainly is for most Asian languages.
The ability to use phonemes is one thing but paralinguistics is another (sarcasm).
If you're interested in reading the actual research paper involved (as opposed to a journalist's interpretation), it's readable here - pdf file, but lots of graphs, tables and pictures, so I'll forgive them.
The article is about speech translation, not text translation.
Or perhaps the modern day battleground of evolution against the challenging new scientific theory of intelligent design, which suggests that certain biological features such as the flagellum are irreducibly complex and therefore could not possibly have been developed by increments as evolutionists would have it.
There is no modern day battleground of evolution against anything.
There is no theory of intelligent design. I suppose you could argue that there is a hypothesis of intelligent design.
The fundamental problem here is that "evolutionists" do NOT claim that evolution is a series of incremental changes. "Evolutionists" claim that evolution is a combination of a series of incremental changes alongside a series of radical mutations. These radical mutations generally result in the premature death of the creature, but can also give rise to the "irreducibly complex" of which you speak. Take for example the idea of bacteria which are resistant to certain anti-bacterial compound. The "incremental" development of resistance is ridiculous. Being slightly less dead from exposure to anti-bacterial compounds is not an inheritable trait so you cannot pass it on to your offspring. You can, however, encounter a mutation that gives resistance and then pass that mutation to offspring. Try reading up on evolution and natural selection a bit.
It's a bit like hazing, and while people on both sides of the issue become almost fanatical in defense of their sacred cow the end result is good science.
Sacred cows are Hindu. You are probably a christian. You might want to pick a different metaphor. There are no "sides" or "issues." There is fact and belief. If your beliefs are contrary to fact, then you are not on some "side," you are delusional.
But the overhead of trying to generate acceptance of a scientific breakthrough is almost as difficult as making the breakthrough to start with!
There is no need to generate acceptance of a scientific breakthrough. Science is science. The results of an experiment are fact. Whether people accept the results or not is immaterial. If you cool water to a temperature below 32 degrees fahrenheit at one atmosphere, the water will become a solid. If you choose not to "accept" that fact, you are free to, but that does not change the fact that the water is now a solid.
man, I feel like mold.
Interactive Systems Laboratories at the University of Karlsruhe and
International Canter for Advanced Communication Technologies.
You can probably also search the university library and search for the dissertations and theses that were result of this project.
This is not exactly the same, but you should see this movie (get it with wget first, if it's not working).
Another extremely impressive video.