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'Tower of Babel' Translator Under Development

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the what-did-he-say dept.

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."

25 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. The science behind it is fascinating by chowdy · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Tower of Babel Translator is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Tower of Babel Translator in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Tower of Babel Translator.

    1. Re:The science behind it is fascinating by ch0knuti · · Score: 3, Informative

      The point is not in the height of the tower. It's the symbolism that man was defying God and trying to get "there" by his own means.

    2. Re:The science behind it is fascinating by blippy · · Score: 3, Funny

      The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Tower of Babel Translator in your ear

      No, no, you're thinking of a babelfish. The Tower has to be inserted up a completely different orifice.

  2. Other Languages by Longfinger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If this technology gets good enough, none of us would ever need to learn a second language. That would be a bad thing, right?

    1. Re:Other Languages by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
      If this technology gets good enough, none of us would ever need to learn a second language. That would be a bad thing, right?

      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.

    2. Re:Other Languages by kfg · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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. True automatic translation is not possible.

      As an example, I was once called upon to translate the simple advertising slogan "Si Misura" from Italian to English. This had already been translated as "Made to Measure."

      Quick, without thinking, tell me what the product was?

      If you're a native English speaker you probably think of a suit or dress. Maybe a kitchen cabinet. Some tool with human ergonomic requirements.

      The product was a liquid chemical compound, so I translated it into the correct English idiom for such; "Custom Blended."

      And with that simple example we haven't even touched on issues of syntax yet; or more complicated issues of social usage (say formal vs. informal forms).

      KFG

    3. Re:Other Languages by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      But doesn't the language itself play a part in the culture? Almost any language you look at there are bound to be words that don't translate well because the object or action or emotion in question is so innately bound to the culture that they made a word for it, but to other cultures the concept isn't all that common so they never made a word for it.

      Also, even translation by the best humans still destroys a lot of the subtlety and beauty in a language. It's a best a piecemeal game. Hell, most novels/tv shows are not even translated literally, some artistic liberty is usually taken to make the work "flow" in the language it is being translated into. Translation is great for contracts or technical documents, but if you really want to understand a culture then you need to learn its language.

      --
      Monstar L
    4. Re:Other Languages by JuzzFunky · · Score: 5, Funny

      Second Language? You might not even have to larn a first language! Just grunt. Mm.

      --
      Unexpect the expected!
    5. Re:Other Languages by brian.glanz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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

    6. Re:Other Languages by rHBa · · Score: 3, Funny

      I won't have to larn a frist linguage wunce I instorl firfox 2

    7. Re:Other Languages by Explodicle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    8. Re:Other Languages by Shaper_pmp · · Score: 3, Informative

      You can't fully understand what someone's saying unless you understand their cultural context, and how it differs from your own.

      For example, what's the difference in (UK) English between: "I couldn't care less" and "I could care less"? In US English they're used interchangably, but in UK English they're opposites. There are many such words or phrases in the English language alone where the precise word chosen (or connotations of a word) totally changes the meaning of the entire phrase, even reversing it's meaning.

      Another example would be a simple phrase in US English like "he was pissed"? US meaning is "he was angry". In UK English it means "he was drunk", and a word-for-word translation into greek it would be meaningless (the equivalent idiom in Greek would be something like "he took it on the skull").

      Seriously - if you ever want to understand the drawback to automatic translation, try getting two Greek friends to talk colloquially to you, but translating each individual word into English - it's completely unintelligible.

      --
      Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
  3. that's awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    chinese people can now speak like poorly dubbed kung-fu movies in real life!

  4. subvocalization by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization

    Subvocalization is basically micro-movements of the muscles associated with speech. The Wikipedia article mostly focuses on reading & subvocalization, so I wonder, do you have to be trained to do it consciously?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_speech_recog nition

    This wikipedia article says that recognition is hard.

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
    1. Re:subvocalization by Frogbert · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well luckily I've changed the article, so now sub vocal recognition is easy

  5. Remind me to turn this off at work by Joebert · · Score: 5, Funny
    Electrodes are attached to the neck and face to detect the movements that occur as the person silently mouths words and phrases.

    It's only a matter of time before this thing gets me fired.
    --
    Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
  6. Question of the Millenium by richdun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So let's say this works - which language will we use as a primary one now that it doesn't matter, since everyone can understand everyone else easily?

    Anyone who has studied languages knows (not "no"s or "nose") that English absolutely sucks (as in is bad, not as in pulls air into itself), but we use it widely (as in across a large range of people and places, not as in having a large girth) in large part (as in a significant reason, not as in being a big piece of something) due to the primary sources of finance and technology being in English-speaking countries (not literally the countries, but their people).

    I like the idea, and see the huge, positive social impact it could have, but I feel sorry for the guy/gal responsible for it to test its ability to translate into/out of English.

    1. Re:Question of the Millenium by davidsyes · · Score: 3, Funny

      Aw (not as in awe-struck...) shucks (not as in stripping corn stalks) you're such cunning linguist....

      --
      Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
    2. Re:Question of the Millenium by AhtirTano · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sorry to say, English is not as unusual as you would like to believe. (I am a linguist.)

      In many ways, English is quite simple. For example, our word order is very straightforward. I work with a language were the following is a normal sentence: "This is city New called York here." (This city here is called New York.) In fact, almost every permutation of those words would be valid without a change in the basic meaning (as long as "is" is the second word). This is a so-called non-configurational language. Parsing English is easy by comparison.

      I work with another language were there is a slight stress difference between the sentences "That might be true" and "He's honestly picking his butt." The words "soup" and "shit" are differentiated by a 40-50% increase in the length of the last vowel. There is one word for both "blue" and "green", and another word for "yellow", "orange", and "brown".

      As to the likelihood of this project succeeding anytime soon: Languages are often not directly translatable into each other. One language I work with has an entire part of speech I cannot adequately translate into English. I have to wave my hands and point to convey the same information in English.

  7. Oh great... by revlayle · · Score: 4, Funny

    the last time i heard of people constructing a Tower of Babel, the whole world got toally pwned and no one could understand each other. well, not much different than it is now is it.

    /not religious

    1. Re:Oh great... by aussie_a · · Score: 4, Funny

      Apparently that happened about 2,000 years after the Earth was first formed. Considering that happened 4.57 billion years ago I find it appalling that only now are they attempting to translate the numerous languages that resulted from the Tower of Babel travesty. I mean, how lazy can you get? What have they been doing all this time?

  8. Ain't Going to Happen by eean · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!

  9. Communication != understanding by schwieter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "The Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

  10. Killer App by jshazen · · Score: 3, Informative

    I can't believe nobody's posted this yet. This would be *really* useful as a *mono*-lingual translator! Build one of these into every cell phone, and suddenly I don't have to hear your inane conversation just because you happen to be sitting next to me in the plane.

    This should be *much* easier to do that the version that actually translates, and it would add nearly as much to quality of life of the user and everyone else in his environs.

  11. Continued.. by lobotomir · · Score: 3, Funny

    The Tower of Babel Translator, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.