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Can Your Mouth Become Multilingual?

Posted by Zonk on from the sign-me-up dept.

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."

9 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. Absolutely! by DoraLives · · Score: 5, Funny
    the researchers think that these electrodes could be implanted into your mouth and your throat in a decade from now

    Oh yeah. Please. Right now. Insert the electrodes into me right now. I can't wait!

    --
    Is it fascism yet?
    1. Re:Absolutely! by arose · · Score: 5, Funny

      Careful, sarcasm isn't translated by this system.

      --
      Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
  3. 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.

    --
    Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
    1. Re:Nothing to see here... by Mishra100 · · Score: 5, Informative

      "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".

    2. Re:Nothing to see here... by FlopEJoe · · Score: 5, Funny

      Why does he keep saying "My hovercraft is full of eels??"

  4. Re:A new form of slander and hate crime violations by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Funny
    Would the CEO now be responsible for committing a hate crime, merely because this device mistranslated what he said, and output racist remarks?
    I will not repeat what Babelfish made of your post when it translated it into Dutch, but suffice to say you'll be hearing from my lawyer.
    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  5. specific research paper concerned by 5i · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  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.