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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."

8 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Nifty but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This still doesn't solve the problem that automatic translators still have problems processing the logic of certain languages. Just look at babelfish.

  2. Nothing to see here... by LeonGeeste · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't believe a word of this. Everybody likes to say they've finally cracked the problem of machine translation. This is exactly what we saw previously on Slashdot with the quote about the "bin Laden tapes" or whatever.

    Proof? Ah, we'll get to that later.

    Where in any of the links does it give the text of what he said, and the translation? And the analysis to the success of the translation? I found two sentences it mentioned. That's not good enough. Let's allow independent examination of the success of this translation.

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    Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
    1. Re:Nothing to see here... by jericho4.0 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Researchers demoed a system that does a very challenging task, not perfectly, but enough that they didn't get laughed at, and some reporters thought it worth writing a story about.

      You demand that it work perfectly, and that they present you with a web interface.

      What the fuck have you done?

      --
      "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
  3. eh? by clragon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    constant maintence would be needed to maintain a good database for this translator, or else the 70s slangs would be coming out of the other guys mouth. it would be much easier to LEARN a language at a young age, then you dont have to worry about "are they understanding what im saying right now?" when you use one of those high-tech translators :D

  4. A new form of slander and hate crime violations? by CyricZ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Indeed, we may see a new form of slander arise.

    Imagine what would happen if a malicious individual was able to modify such a system before a CEO gives a big speech to investors. The CEO is speaking English, but the Romanian and Chinese investors are listening in their native tongues.

    Soon enough the CEO is talking about synergistically-tiered multi-integrated doodads, but the Romanians are hearing "Cock sucking whore bitch! I fucked her up the ass in Bucharest and her nipples bled!", while the Chinese investors are hearing a whole string of racial epithets. Who would be responsible if such an incident occurred?

    Multiple nations also have hate crime legislation. Would the CEO now be responsible for committing a hate crime, merely because this device mistranslated what he said, and output racist remarks?

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    Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
  5. Re:How could it translate? by violent.ed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The computers have problems translating the things written as are... bilingual will tell him that translating in line for complete prayers they will do nobody good, for the the majority of the parts. My Spanish teachers are all capable to see roles with translations of computer very easily, due to similarities in words and meanings (just as the "pants" of word that can be colthing or they may be breathing a lot of) not to mention, the grammar and those things are not done well in all. For the amusing one of it, the test that goes a translator in line [freetranslation com] and writes something in English, Spaniard translates him, then back to English. Some they result they are enough lunatic. I guess that the point that try to cause is this: what does the so special translators compared to the we have now? How can they work they better? Sure, there is probably a little more the effort put in these, but in I do not I think that a good translator will be available by other 5 years, not to mention the total "takes the speech that you do not say" the hard thing should believe.

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    - You're not paranoid, they really are after you.
  6. This isn't about translation by sbma44 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    it's about speech recognition. They've identified a new source of data for identifying phonemes, one that apparently provides cleaner output than working from the audio. Dollars to donuts the resulting words are then just popped into a Babelfish-equivalent.

    This is interesting and important work, but the translation angle is really just one potential application of the technology.

  7. Can Your Mouth Become Multilingual? by PigIronBob · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We had this nifty thing at school years ago, enabled us to speak 4 different languages, it was called STUDY, in addition the more we understood all these foreign languages the better we came to understand our own.

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    You never catch me alive