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Star Trek-like 'Phraselator' Helps Police
coondoggie writes "Yet another Star Trek-like device is making its way into the real world. VoxTec's Phraselator name sounds a bit like something the Three Stooges might have used long ago but no, this PDA-like device was developed through Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for use in Afghanistan and Iraq by American soldiers for communicating with locals who spoke Farsi, Dari, Pashto and other languages. It is now being used as one tool to help keep the peace between English and non-English speakers by police departments in California, Florida, Nevada. In a nutshell the $2,500 ruggedized Phraselator runs an Intel PXA255 400mHz processor that supports a built-In noise canceling microphone, a VOCON 3200 Speech Recognizer, 1GB removable SD card, 256MB of DRAM Memory and 64MB Flash Memory. It can store up to 10,000 phrases."
"I thought she was asking for sex, turns out she just wanted directions to the 7-11. Oopsies!"
Sure baby, I'll give you my phone number...in Hex
The summary is the first 3 paragraphs of the article and, not surprisingly, fails to summarize the article. So when you actually go and read the article you get the feeling that maybe it is an example of how poor automatic translation is, as the article has incredibly horrid grammar.. to the point that the whole second half of the article makes no sense.
Oh, and when you finally do figure out what the hell this article is about, it's boring as hell.. who cares about a mobile language translator device with text-to-speech that doesn't even do speech recognition? Travelers have been able to pick up such technology for $50 for a decade now.
Yawn.
How we know is more important than what we know.
VoxTec's marketing department should be summarily dismissed for coming up with that one.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This is pretty good, but it still doesn't solve the problem that the officer can't understand the other individual. This could lead to some problems. Now, an officer may wait for backup that speaks the language, or proceed forward knowing that he/she cannot understand the other person and vice-a-versa.
Now, due to this device, officers could think they are making themselves clear, and behave differently, (i.e. I said get down, and I said it in your language, now get down or I shoot), but the other side could be saying something important and can't be understood.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
Citizen: Someone's planted a bomb in there!
Phraselator: "Somebody set up us the bomb."
Soldier: What you say!!
The reason they're not using it in all major cities is simple,... it won't translate jive . So it's useless in the ghetto,... I guess we'll still have to look for little, old, white ladies that speak jive!
Aliens: "Bak Bak, BaBa Bak Bak, BAK BAK BAK"
Translator: "We come in peace, we mean you no harm!"
"See? They mean us no harm!"
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Now the police can safely ignore the Spanish equivalent of "Don't tase me, bro"!
WHAT?? Let me explain. What this means is that the guy who wrote the comment is the owner of a hovercraft, and he's complaining that it's full of eels.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Todos son de su base nos pertenece
Toutes vos bases sont nous appartiennent
Ihre Basis sind gehören zu uns
Al uw uitvalsbasis zijn bij ons horen
Tutti sono la base appartengono a noi
Toda a sua base são pertence a nós
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
For further information, please visit this page.
DON'T PHRASE ME BRO!
Jenny's got a new number! 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
What the hell is Wikipedia?
<sig> </sig>
A microphone for mimes?
i can imagine the translator going off at odd times,
Police: "Freeze!"
Criminal: "No mi gusta las fresa! No el tase yo!"
Phraselator: "I don't like strawberries, you can't appraise me!"
If only you could harness the power of awkward silences...
>> a VOCON 3200 Speech Recognizer :-)
A VOGON 3200 speech recognizer? Don't the Vogons use Babel Fish like the rest of us?
Using a taser does make the policeman's/soldier's job easier. When you tase someone, translations are simple: "AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH" is the English translation of "AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH" in Arabic. And Farsi, and Kurdish, and Najdi, and Khaliji, and...
Translation of "AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH" from other common languages:
Russian: "You are correct, I should not have been reading that book, comrade."
German: "I apologize for being too Jewish, and will now board the crowded yet impressively prompt train."
Canadian: "Oh darn. Iced the puck again."
Japanese: "I believe the voice actress for my favorite anime is making an appearance nearby."
French: "My cheese!" or "You appear to be trying to add a non-French word to the French language", depending on context.
American: "It appears my Tivo did not record this week's episode of Lost."
Mandarin: "Hello."
"Australian": "Crikey, look at the size of that stingra--"
Jamaican: (nobody has ever heard this phrase from a Jamaican)
Anybody left I didn't offend?
...like all translation devices up to day:
Police: Ok Stan, this is a dangerous situation but our new Phraselator 4000 will deal with the situation, just talk into the mike:
Stan: Everything will be just fine, just drop your weapons.
Phraselator 4000: Every Bill be Your time, you topless weapon.
Terrorist: Allah will punish you, infidel!
Phraselator 4000: Allah will puke you, insurance!
Stan: (looks at the other officers and talks)
Stan: This is your second and final warning, drop down your weapons - NOW!
Phraselator 4000: Piss is your semicolon and finally warm, top down groove you weapon - HOW?
Stan: I don't think this is working, sir...
Phraselator 4000: I don't think, piss is lurking, sir...
Stan: Will you shut that useless piece of cr*p down!!
Terrorist: In soviet russia - camel piss on you!
(*everyone fires their guns, Phraselator 4000 has saved the day - once again*)
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Darmack and Gillard at Tenagra! Shaka, when the walls fell.
Translating between related languages (such as western European languages which all derive mostly from Latin) is often a case of translating each word and re-arranging the sentence a little. It might sound a bit funny but will convey the meaning. Thus, all the translation software needs is a dictionary and some rules about converting word order in sentences.
Translating between unrelated languages, such as English to Japanese, is much harder. Not only are the words different, but so are all the forms for expressing ideas. In English you might say "John is here", but in Japanese you would effectively say "as for John, here exists." In English you say "John has that book," in Japanese it becomes "at John that (other) book exists." (In Japanese you can say "that book you have" or "that other book", but just generally "that book".) The translation software has to actually understand the meaning of what is being said, in order to re-phrase it in the context of the target language.
In fact, you do get a bit of that even in European languages. For example, in English we say "I am lost," but the French say "I have lost myself."
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That's it! I've had it with these motherfucking eels on this motherfucking hovercraft!
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.