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'Tower of Babel' Translator Under Development
monopole writes "The BBC is reporting on a bilingual translator under development by Carnegie Mellon University which senses sub-vocalized speech, recognizes it, translates it and then synthesizes the translation. The overall effect would be to dub the speech of the speaker."
I think that's kind of like saying that if calculators get good enough, no one needs to know math anymore.
In fact, this will probably be used in many of the same places - anywhere you'd find a cash register, you'll probably find automated translaters. You won't see them used in academia or in diplomacy, though.
Don't worry, they've been working on machine translation since the 60s and fully automatic translation still sucks. Speech to text isn't so great either.
Language is complicated!
This could be a terrible thing. Learning another language teaches you a lot about a way a culture thinks.
There are practical advantages in problem solving which have been tied to the language used in mental formulation, for example the development of what is metaphorically called "logical circuitry" has been shown to diverge between native English and Mandarin Chinese speakers.
My expectation is that spoken language will eventually go the way of handwriting: creature comfort, dying art, what once defined the best of us but becomes in many cases an indulgent inefficiency. How?
Anybody who dares to at this point, has realized they can jam wires into the human brain and let it learn to control machines on the other end. It's already beyond that in fact, with embedded communication devices being the next step, stepping shoe now currently in air: you'll see in a few days in Nature how real the "Neurochip" already is.
People should stop pretending this is about helping paraplegics by playing Space Invaders or moving a cursor with mind control, or that we're only trying to help brain injury, stroke, or paralysis patients. This is about construction workers with better than human strength in their better than human limbs. We drive vehicles through obstacles on land at 10 times the speed human beings can run, and we fly vehicles at 800 times the speed we can biologically move ourselves. We are mentally capable of managing bodily abilities far beyond those with which we are born.
This is not only about helping the disabled, and it's not only about incredible speeds or strengths. It's also about perfectly able people who would rather control personal electronics with their thoughts than search for or decipher other remote control electronics. Personal electronics are going to be a lot more personal, too; these people will eventually prefer to have personal electronics embedded in their bodies and networked with their minds.
Don't worry about losing human language: we will only lose it when we'll be better off for it, when we communicate and think better without it. The translator here, with IBM and elsewhere is of course more narrowly focused, but with this we are converging on technological telepathy and obsoleting human language.
Human logic and good intentions have come at it from a more traditional, less technological direction, giving us Esperanto, Loglan, Lojban, etc. You've probably heard of only one of these, which you probably laughed at somebody for being Geek enough to know any of. Most of them have been great ideas and well executed, but despite inherent gains in efficiency or intellectual force they are nowhere near the markets and their returns depend on mass adoption. Technology is different, it's tied directly to markets and to private profiteering with immediate amplification of wealth among the wealthy. Human beings are not going to create a better enough language, soon enough, before we create a technology which in itself superior to all human language. BG
Language is not composed of words. It is composed of idiomatic phrases (idiomatic phrases do not mean what the words mean) only understandable in context.
That's like saying humans aren't composed of cells. We are composed of organs who's functions are not useful in isolation. Idioms are composed of words, and the words are vital. Just like an organ will cease to work if you change the component cells, the idiom will cease to mean what you want it to if you change the component words.
True automatic translation is not possible.
True automatic translation will be possible when we have true artificial intelligence. And not a day sooner. (But maybe a day or to later.)
If it is using muscular sensors to "detect" sounds then wouldn't it be possible to create one that would allow the mute to speak? One would think that an English to English or Chinese to Chinese translation would allow then to perfect the detection process, and aid any number of people who can't for whatever reason speak but who can mouth words.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Well, the problem is that understanding someone is far more than parsing the other's sentences. It's getting to the point where you understand what meaning the other intended to convey. That's here all this machine translation still fails (and probably will fail for a long time to come). Because for that you need a lot of backround knowledge, you actually have to attune yourself to the experiences, the culture of the other. And that is a large part of what is learnt in a foreign language course.
All this automatic translation feigns that you understand the other, but actually your interpretation might be very different from the intended meaning. Sometimes a rough understanding might work, but mostly it you run into problems later. You might discover real referential differences, like you two where talking about wo very different things, but also interpretational differences or social misunderstandings which might result in severe discord.
A good way to test this are jokes, because they are such a condensed way of cultural meaning.
But this works also between varieties of one language, e.g English. Are you really sure an American fully gets what a upper middle class person from India is telling him/her about her feelings or experience, just because both of them have English as their mother tongue?
Understanding the other is an undertaking that costs a lot of effort and machine translation helps very little with that. Appreciating diversity, like appreciating everything else, demands effort and dedication and there is no short cut.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Keep in mind there's only one math, and it makes sense. There are thousands of langages, and none of them make any damn sense.
What about the fundamental issue of grammar? How is a (subject)(verb)(object) language going o be translated live into a (subject)(object)(verb) language? Or the old "The man bites the dog" example from introductory german class. Perhaps this can be done, but there is going to have to be some temporal caching...
They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!
Actually, it's been my understanding that it wasn't because they were somehow trying to build their way to heaven, but rather because they were going against the edict of God to go forth into the corners of the world and prosper and instead vying to stay in one place. He then frustrated all communications efforts, not just those associated with building the tower, so that people would congregate with like languages and scuttle off to their own corner.
The God of the Bible would feel not threatened in the least, I think, by humans dorking around and trying to build a heavenscraper.
While an intelligent assumption for a person who has not delved into the history of the bible, it is however mostly wrong.
The allegory belief usually comes when one distances himself from the Bible. The less you read it (be you agnostic or Christian) the more likely you are to believe that it is allegorical and disjointed.
The bible is at best a historical account of a group of people through their eyes, thus needs to be viewed as such, and the writing is protected by God. At worst it is an accurate mythological history book.
I am not a theologian or historian, just a geek but I am fascinated with the bible's accuracy Historically, they may embellish stories to include God, but the time line is accurate and the Historical places and people are real. Which is fantastic when you consider the age of the book.
In conclusion I would say that the tower of babel story is not allegorical, but rather God chose that junction to disrupt the human race long enough for them to define themselves rather than playing silly games that he told them not to. Whether we like Mosaic law or not, even as secularists we have to admit, there is a bit of unnatural wisdom in the protection offered by Mosaic law.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
A few samples from Japanese->English:
"Those walls are several feet thick and can hold back millions of gallons of water..." translated to "High columns having much fat toe plus can carry big number aqua litres"
"I'm not feeling very well, do you have some aspirin?" translated to "This day of my health is in negative. In my possession of you are pills?"
"All of your bases are in our possession." translated to "My tank is fight."
And so on.