Slashdot Mirror
Computer Translator Ready for Testing in Iraq
cgibby98 wrote to mention a Wired News story about a battle-zone translation technology that may allow near real-time conversations between English and Arabic speakers. From the article: "Funded by Darpa, the system would allow troops to communicate in Arabic through a laptop computer equipped with voice recognition and translation software. Troops could speak in English and have their words instantly translated into Iraqi Arabic, 'spoken' by a computerized man's voice. The program also translates Arabic into English. Will it replace the need for an interpreter when you're having some sort of high-level conversation? Absolutely not. But it is absolutely to the point where it could be useful in some carefully chosen situations."
Language butchers YOU!
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
But it is absolutely to the point where it could be useful in some carefully chosen situations.
Seems like you could say that for any new, generally unproven, technique
I swear! I swear to you, I was only asking him if his hovercraft was full of eels! Stop fondling my buttocks!
This have disaster writed all over it!
Will it fit in my ear?
Trusting a computer to do real-time translation in a volatile, war-torn region...
English: "We applaud the creation of your new constitution and are preparing to pull our troops out of the country so that the rebuilding process can begin."
Arabic: "All your base are belong to us."
Have that thing read the Koran from arabix to english and then vice versa, then by the number offended devided by all moslims gives you a nice error rate.
Will it be able to instantly start translating from an alien language that it has never heard before as soon as the other person appears on the main viewer?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
no, its a balm like an ointment...
always mosh clockwise
I've thought of an implementation like this for some time, only I was thinking of the added element of sampling the user's voice with phonemes in the language to be translated to and then averaging that sound sample with the computer so that you could hear it somewhat spoken in the user's voice. Eventually, this would be a simple headset that could be worn, and you'd talk into a microphone and have some speakers around your ears broadcast what you said in translated form. Those speakers could also be a sort of unidirectional microphone for picking up on the foreign language-speaker's voice and translating it back.
It'd be for one-to-one conversations, of course.
Unless we get to a point where we can separate individual voices in real time and then translate them and have the computer dynamically assign a digital voice to each of the translations so we don't get a jumbled conversation.
I tried out the online demo that works through the web browser. I wondered what "I hope the weather is clement when you arive" would translate into. You get:
"durka durka mohammed jihad durka durka"
Super!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I managed something similar a year or so back, in an attempt to create a 'babelfish'. Of course the input/output had to be specified, and it had a very limited range of languages - certainly no universal translator but it did use all free software (as that's all I have).
h p
0) Input recording of English languagge
1) Voice recognition software (Sphinx) pipes output to
2) Script using online translator to convert between language
3) Festival stumbles out an imhuman gramatically-wrong rendition of the input.
It wasn't exactly in realtime, I just fed it recordings, for which it would then output an audio file in the other language. The worst step was the voice recognition, which didn't work great even when given the output of the voice syntethisier.
Sphinx http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/html/cmusphinx.p
English: We are here to save you!
Translation: We are here to collect you!
Seems to work fine to me!
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
But it is absolutely to the point where it could be useful in some carefully chosen situations."
... So much for the diplomacy and professionalism the US officer was trying to convey.
I think it is far more useful than many people realize given that many people have too much faith in human translators. I was watching a discovery channel episode of "Off to War" and a US officer had his men hold their fire when they saw armed insurgents because they were not sure where the Iraqi police attached to the unit were. Afterwards the US officer tells the translator to tell the police that he had to hold his fire because he did not know where they were and that they must let him know when they leave the group. Subtitles show that the translator really says something like: You idiots! You completely screwed up the mission
Administration-enabled translator: We are so happy that you love America for toppling your eeeeeeevil dictatorship!
American soldier 2: Hoo yah, we're gonna git us some awl!
Administration-enabled translator: We are going to train you to defend yourselves before we leave!
American soldier 3: Dude, I was totally kidding about your sister
Administration-enabled translator: Why do you HATE FREEDOM?!
American soldier 4: See, we worship the same thing, really - God, Allah, means the same thing!
Administration-enabled translator: Praise JESUS!
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
"No one in the military would make life or death decisions based on a machine translation." That's pure CYA for the first time this device gets someone killed. If a life or death decision needs to be made and the only thing you have at hand is a machine translation, what are you going to use?
a rmy">James T. Fallows, "The U.S. military does everything in Iraq worse and slower than it could if it solved its language problems. It is unbelievable that American fighting ranks have so little help. Soon after Pearl Harbor the U.S. military launched major Japanese-language training institutes at universities and was screening draftees to find the most promising students. America has made no comparable effort to teach Arabic. Nearly three years after the invasion of Iraq the typical company of 150 or so U.S. soldiers gets by with one or two Arabic-speakers. T. X. Hammes says that U.S. forces and trainers in Iraq should have about 22,000 interpreters, but they have nowhere near that many. "
I don't know how representative of the state of the art they are, but I've been massively underwhelmed at Babelfish's ability to understand foreign-language text and by ViaVoice's ability to understand speech. I can't imagine the effect of layering machine translation errors on top of machine voice interpretation errors.
According to href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/iraq-
Instead of doing the obvious thing--give soldiers training in Arabic and offer big bonuses for Arabic-speaking recruits--the U.S. does nothing for a couple of years and then tries to throw a cheap technical fix at the problem.
If we must throw gadgets at the problem, why not a satellite phone linked to a big building full of human Arabic/English simultaneous translators?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
On many occasions, it's been shown that if the pidgin language is used consistently around kids, they'll start using it, but just add in all this extra grammatical stuff that they expect to hear but don't - and then the language is said to become "creolized".
Also: we don't predominantly think in language. We think in something that's more base than, and was prior to, language. Everyone always hears that decades-old, long-ago-disproven Whorfian line, that people (in the same species, with the same neurological makeup) actually think differently according to what language they speak - but no one's buying it anymore except those Psych 101 students who are going to major in elementary education instead of cognitive development.
I'm a language dork so I feel like I HAVE to comment every time I see language stuff on /. Except for all those "it's"es where it should be "its". Those, I can let you guys have.
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
...I totally agree - once it works.
I went to school in a military college in Quebec. One of its aims was to make us fluently bilingual (French and English) and a lot of effort was spent on that. All communications outside the classroom switched language every two weeks, we got 5 classes of instruction per week, and we spent two months one summer on a full-bore language training programme.
And after 4 years of this, I was indeed fluently bilingual. (Je suis billingue)
BUT - it took 4 years of constant immersion to get there, French and English are reasonably similar (same alphabet, mostly the same sounds, a lot of shared words, reasonably similar grammar) and I still can't do a very good job of translating. In fact, I didn't really start to be able to function in French until I was comfortable enough with it to THINK in French (pense en francias). If I think in French, I'm fine. If I have to think in english and then speak in French (or vice versa) there's a kind of mental clashing of gears; it's like the speech centre and the comprehension centre are in one place, and the translation centre is in another.
So I can watch a French movie, no problem. But ask me to provide a running translation of the dialogue in English, and I can't do it - not without falling way behind. Translation is HARD.
Plus, from personal experiance, trying to communicate with somebody when you share very little language is very, very frustrating - for both of you - even in the most benign circmstances. It's a stressor. Now try it when one or both participants in the conversation are in fear for their lives... it's an easy way for tempers and emotions to get stoked way high.
And that's with French, which was relatively easy. Arabic reads right-to-left, has no shared alphabet with romantic languages, shares few sounds, and has a completely different grammar. I can't imagine how long it would take to be able to speak fluent Farsi or Pashtun - but yet, some day, my life might depend on it.
If we can develop a working real-time translator, it's going to make a lot of people's lives a lot easier. It will be a de-escalator when it comes to conflict resolution - and by far the best way to resolve conflicts is peacefully. Ask any soldier.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Except that there are situations in which a machine translation might give you exactly the opposite tranlation of what is intended by the speaker. Or something meaningless. Try to translate "That's so bad!" from English to Dutch and back again in Babelfish. What do you get? "That's so prayed!"
Translation is an AI problem. It isn't going to be solved that easily.
Bullshit. You clearly know absolutely nothing about the subject and are pulling crap out of your ass. They already do offer bonuses to qualified recruits based on their ability to speak foreign languages. And do you really think they're not cranking out arabic linguists as fast as they can? It takes 9 months to a year to train a non-arabic speaker to speak well enough to just barely get by. It then usually takes an additional year of real-life exposure before they truly become proficient. Furthermore, the language program only takes those who score in the top 5% on their aptitude tests, and of those they do accept, fully half still wash out. You may think it's just a matter of teaching all the infantry grunts a half dozen canned phrases, but making a usable translator out of someone is a hell of a lot harder than teaching them to shoot a machine gun. This all I know, being a former soldier with the 101st Airborne (311th MI bn, "Eyes of the Eagle") and a graduate myself of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I'm stationed in central Iraq, and think this software would be great as a backup tool. I've never used this hardware, so I can't comment on how well it really works.
At the moment, I'd stick with my Iraqi 'terps for day to day operations. I have 9 working for me now, I trust all of them. Typically they're screened by a US Company, and are pretty smart guys who love their country.
Where they prove to be extra valuable is when they use their "Arab-sense". They can tell where people are from by the way they talk, or look. They know the difference between Iraqi and Syrian Arabic... and even between cities in Iraq. They're great at defusing situations, and act as my eyes and ears when working with locals/Iraqi soldiers. They are also able communicate my intent without directly translating my words. Sometimes a direct translation isn't the best way to go, as it can be confusing. If needed, they can further clarify what I'm trying to convey. That's why I like to call them my 'terps, instead of translators. Strict translation may be OK in certain situations, but when you're in a hot situation having someone interpret can be necessary.