Speech-to-Speech Translator Developed For iPhone

Ponca City, We love you writes "Dr. Dobbs reports that Alex Waibel, professor of computer science and language technologies at Carnegie Mellon University, has developed an iPhone application that turns the iPhone into a translator that converts English speech into Spanish, or vice versa. Users simply speak a sentence or two at a time into the iPhone and the iPhone will respond with an audible translation. 'Jibbigo's software runs on the iPhone itself, so it doesn't need to be connected to the Web to access a distant server,' says Waibel. Waibel is a leader in speech-to-speech translation and multimodal speech interfaces, creating the first real-time, speech-to-speech translator for English, German and Japanese. 'Automated speech translation is an expensive proposition that has been supported primarily by large government grants,' says Waibel. 'But our sponsors are impatient to see this technology become more widely available and we, as researchers, are eager to find new revenues that will help us extend this technology to more of the 6,000 languages now spoken worldwide.'"

Comments

Testing the Hungarian version

[CharlyFoxtrot]

My nipples explode with delight !

Re:Testing the Hungarian version

[dkleinsc]

That's alright, I just want to see how well it translates "Dear Aunt, Let’s set so double the killer delete select all."

Re:Testing the Hungarian version

[Steve Newall]

My hovercraft is full of eels

Speak simply

[cerberusss]

Users simply speak a sentence or two at a time into the iPhone and the iPhone will respond with an audible translation.

I think that should be corrected to "Users speak simply...". When using Google Translate to translate something from Dutch to French or German, I often deliberately make simple sentences that I know can be parsed easily and without having to detect double meanings.

I mean, if Google Translate cannot do a good translation WITHOUT having to interpret sounds to words, then this tech will hardly be any better.

Yeah yeah I should be more positive...

Re:Speak simply

[Aladrin]

Also, have you seen Google Voice's attempted transcripts of voicemails? Things that I think are pretty clear come out in very, very odd ways.

Not that Google is the best at everything, but they usually do quite a bit better than average. I find it hard to believe someone has managed to best them at both of these technologies and their first attempt to market it is an iPhone app.

Re:Speak simply

[drinkypoo]

I mean, if Google Translate cannot do a good translation WITHOUT having to interpret sounds to words, then this tech will hardly be any better.

The device receives verbal cues that are missing from translating text to another language. In fact, there is far more information available, and perhaps it is possible to get clues about which version of a word is desired (or which of several similar-sounding words) from tone shift.

Re:Speak simply

[MobyDisk]

Google translate is a cheesy free tool that does not compare with professional translation tools. Last time I checked, the state of the art was to obtain documents written in multiple languages, and train a neural network (or something similar) based on those manual translations. It's orders of magnitude better than Google translate.

Re:Speak simply

[mauddib~]

Not that Google is the best at everything, but they usually do quite a bit better than average. I find it hard to believe someone has managed to best them at both of these technologies and their first attempt to market it is an iPhone app.

Not that I want to be called a nitpicker, but do you have any evidence? Does your average scale by market-value?

Re:Speak simply

[beanspud]

I do a lot of language translation, and it's pretty obvious to me that it requires understanding. Good automated translation is holodeck territory.

Re:Speak simply

[k.a.f.]

I mean, if Google Translate cannot do a good translation WITHOUT having to interpret sounds to words, then this tech will hardly be any better.

The device receives verbal cues that are missing from translating text to another language. In fact, there is far more information available, and perhaps it is possible to get clues about which version of a word is desired (or which of several similar-sounding words) from tone shift.

In theory, yes. (That's why our brains get more info from a spoken sentence than a written one.) In practice, not a chance in hell. Not until the state of the art advances by several breakthroughs.

Disclaimer: I am a computational linguist.

Re:Speak simply

[Olivier Galibert]

State-of-the-art is Moses for decoding with Giza++ for word-alignment for training. The MT domain has an egyptian naming tradition for some reason (Moses is the open-source successor to Pharaoh). OG.

Re:Speak simply

[R.D.Olivaw]

I just tried Moses' online demo for French-->English. 'J'aime pas le chocolat' is translated to 'I am not chocolate' and 'Je n'aime pas le chocolat' to 'I do not like the choclate'
I guess state-of-the-art is still far from perfect too. The GP's point still stands.

Re:Speak simply

[Anonymous Coward]

But are you cunning?

Re:Speak simply

[MrMr]

I tried "je n'aime pas du chocolat" and got "I do not like chocolate".
It manages to map your incorrect French phrases into incorrect English with similar errors. I'm really impressed by the software...

Re:Speak simply

[Mornedhel]

I tried "je n'aime pas du chocolat" and got "I do not like chocolate". It manages to map your incorrect French phrases into incorrect English with similar errors. I'm really impressed by the software...

Just in case you were not being sarcastic, your own sentence is grammatically incorrect. The correct sentence is indeed "Je n'aime pas le chocolat".

(I am a native French speaker.)

Re:Speak simply

[VeNoM0619]

(I am a native French speaker.)

Well, in that case you may not entirely understand English. Perhaps you really are not chocolate, have you checked lately?

On Other Phones

[Deviate_X]

This has been around for few years now on other phones symbion, windows, android by http://www.speereo.com/ Enjoy ;)

Vamos!

[neoform]

Vamos a arruinar una bonita playa.

oblig Futurama quote

[Coraon]

Professor Hubert Farnsworth: [Professor Farnsworth is showing Cubert, his clone, some of his inventions] And this is my Universal Translator. Unfortunately, so far it only translates into an incomprehensible dead language. Cubert J. Farnsworth: [into the translator's microphone] Hello. Universal Translator: Bonjour! Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Crazy gibberish!

Where do I put the fish again?

[EnigmaticSource]

Parece que he perdido mi copia de la guía, pero como yo soy un príncipe de Nigeria, con mucho gusto a comprar uno por $ 10 millones de dólares EE.UU., si usted me ayudará a transferir fondos de mi hermano, que ha robado mi difunto padre trono. Por favor, responda con su información bancaria para que podamos ayudarnos mutuamente.

Re:Where do I put the fish again?

[selven]

It is concerned, because I destroyed my copy of the directive, to the transference but, because they are natural of the prince of Niger, happy, to buy for $ 10 million dollars the United States if you help me, of the Kapitaln, which eliminates of my brother, of that with túnica the recent mine father' Therefore we of S. Répondez with their information of the battery can help to request the throne?

Re:A suggestion

[nneonneo]

Watch the video. The app has two "textboxes" corresponding to the two languages, and a record button underneath each. After you record the message, the interpreted text shows up in the top, and the translated text in the bottom, followed by a robotic reading of the translation. So yes, it shows the English phrase, and if the video is real then this technology shows some real promise.

Re:A suggestion

[samkass]

Download it from the App Store and see for yourself... http://jibbigo.com/

Admittedly it's a $25 app, so maybe wait for a review. But this isn't vaporware. They actually released the app for public use and it's gotten 4 stars from buyers so far.

mcipod

[uncanny]

This is great news, i can finally order a cheeseburger at mcdonalds again without trying to think back to junior high spanish 1 class!

Re:Why 6,000 languages?

[MrMr]

We use the other languages to make fun of you.

Hilarious

[yamamushi]

I bought the app and said "Marijuana" in English, which promptly spit back out at me in Spanish, "illegales" . I'm pretty sure that translates back into English as , "Illegal".

No, no, you've got it all wrong...

[Tetsujin]

When everyone can just speak English?

See, this kind of Anglo-centric thinking gets us nowhere. We can't get everyone in the world to agree to adopt English as their preferred natural language... It'd never work, there would be too much resistance. People don't want to give up their native tongues to speak English.

No. Clearly the way to go is to get everyone to speak Esperanto.

Re:No, no, you've got it all wrong...

[legojenn]

Until we all spreak Esperanto, I would hope that it contains an American to British English translator too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IX6K77zHwg

(Not the Chaser's best, but will do.)

Re:Why 6,000 languages?

[lordtoran]

When everyone can just speak English?

Ok, which kind of English would you pick? Canadian? Australian? Caribbean? Ghanaese? Indian? Scots? Or one of the countless creole dialects and pidgins? It is one of the few languages that has never been officially reformed or standardized, so it is essentially... multiple languages. Exactly what you criticised.

Languages evolve to reflect the mindset of their speakers. Even if one had the means to eradicate all languages except some form of Standard English, it would instantly break up into ca. 6000 branches again.