Microsoft Shows Off Adaptive, Multilingual Text to Speech System

But I miss Microsoft Sam! by segin · 2012-03-12 14:12 · Score: 1

Arby 'n' the Chief wouldn't be the same without him!

Re:But I miss Microsoft Sam! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 14:23 · Score: 2, Funny

Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all.
Re:But I miss Microsoft Sam! by FridayBob · 2012-03-12 15:02 · Score: 1

Perhaps, but Microsoft Bob was the more memorable.
Re:But I miss Microsoft Sam! by hcs_$reboot · 2012-03-12 18:40 · Score: 1

I've never been the greatest Microsoft advocate, but if that system indeed works as well as promised MS will go risen in my esteem. Not that they will care at all. But compared to the anaemic progress made by Google Translate over the past years (in both design and efficiency regards), Microsoft would deserve some increased consideration.

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Re:But I miss Microsoft Sam! by daem0n1x · 2012-03-13 00:08 · Score: 0

Microsoft, please translate this from Portuguese to English:
Ecrã Azul da Morte
Re:But I miss Microsoft Sam! by daem0n1x · 2012-03-13 00:09 · Score: 1

I tried it, but it keeps repeating the same sentence over and over:
"Don't run, we are your friends"
Re:But I miss Microsoft Sam! by AJH16 · 2012-03-13 03:22 · Score: 1

Microsoft Research comes up with some pretty awesome concepts. Not all of them ever see the light of day, but they are one of the best R&D shops around in the tech world.

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AJ Henderson

AZN by willie3204 · 2012-03-12 14:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

Japanese please!!!!

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The answer to all your problems

Re:AZN by ChipMonk · 2012-03-12 14:21 · Score: 2

You're hoping to understand your un-subbed tentacle porn?
Re:AZN by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 14:45 · Score: 0

All I want is to be able to hear the schoolgirls screams of pain and pleasure as the Octopenis for Hell tears into her every orifice. Is that so unreasonable?
Re:AZN by liamevo · 2012-03-13 00:44 · Score: 1

because screams need translating?
Re:AZN by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-13 06:06 · Score: 0

Do you really need the dialogue in order to understand tentacle porn?
Re:AZN by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-13 09:04 · Score: 0

Does tentacle porn really have dialogue?

Sounds cool....but.. by EdIII · 2012-03-12 14:16 · Score: 1

Will they license this for PBX systems other than their own?

I would love a multilingual system like this. The audio is really good compared to the paid software that I have access to.

Re:Sounds cool....but.. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 14:32 · Score: 0

But what? Why the hell should they?
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by EdIII · 2012-03-12 15:14 · Score: 2

Why the hell not? It's a product like any other.
They sell Microsoft Office for operating systems other than Windows.
I just hope they do the same with this and not tie into their own PBX exclusively. If they do it will make it see a hell of lot less production, that is for sure.
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by mug+funky · 2012-03-12 16:32 · Score: 1

presumably they'll so some rather simple math and see if it's worth it.
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by symbolset · 2012-03-12 16:37 · Score: 1, Troll

They sell Microsoft Office for operating systems other than Windows.
This concession to the antitrust authorities and Apple is something of an exception to the general rule and it was a brutal fight to make it come about. Your use of "operating systems" in the plural is interesting. Other than Mac OS X, which? Windows Phone shouldn't count in this context. Are there any others?

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Re:Sounds cool....but.. by malakai · 2012-03-12 16:55 · Score: 1

It's built using the MS Speech platform. Their may be a port for Mac ( Office for Mac have TTS? ), but in general for a PBX system to use this, this part of the system has to be running windows.
That said, the voices have been free. You can buy MS Speech voices from 3rd parties for lots of money if you want some more natural voices. This seems like a step towards the eventually downfall of highly trained specialized voices. The concept here is, hire a new voice actress, spend an hour, and translate her into multiple languages.

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-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 17:42 · Score: 0

OneNote for IOS: http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-onenote/archive/2011/12/12/onenote-for-ios-gets-new-features-arrives-in-new-markets-worldwide.aspx
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by Gadget_Guy · 2012-03-12 19:57 · Score: 4, Informative

They sell Microsoft Office for operating systems other than Windows.
This concession to the antitrust authorities and Apple is something of an exception to the general rule and it was a brutal fight to make it come about.
What rubbish! The first version of Microsoft Office EVER was for the Mac in August 1989. The Windows release came out in November 1990. With whom did they have this "brutal fight" to get this released for the Mac?
Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, after the release of Word for the Mac in 1985 (2 years after Word for MS-DOS and Xenix), "Word for Mac's sales were higher than its MS-DOS counterpart for at least four years". It seems that Microsoft were rather pragmatic about selling software where it would make a buck!
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by symbolset · 2012-03-12 20:02 · Score: 0

OneNote is not Microsoft Office. It's not even properly an Office app. It's an applet at best.

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Help stamp out iliturcy.
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 20:48 · Score: 0

OneNote is not Microsoft Office. It's not even properly an Office app. It's an applet at best.
What?? First, on the Office product page itself it is the second Office program listed, after Excel. Second, Onenote is one of the most useful Office programs, but very poorly marketed, it does a lot more than people usually think it does. And it is not only available on IOS, but also on Android.
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 20:49 · Score: 0

Have Apple sued yet? After all they invented it!
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by symbolset · 2012-03-12 21:10 · Score: 3, Informative

The selective memory of you 'softie fans is amazing. There's a reason for these things. In 1986 Windows looked like this. Sales of Mac Office kept Microsoft alive in this period. Microsoft Office was moved to reinforce Windows as soon as Windows was a credible environment. Windows wasn't even a credible platform until Windows for Workgroups (Windows 3.11) was released in November 1993, some 7 years later (or 1/3 of the time to present day). Mac Office was so lagging for a long while after WfW launch that it was effectively discontinued, and Office's superior support of the Windows platform was a huge part of Windows assuming dominance over the superior Mac OS which had come to rely on Office, which now offered degraded inferior performance and features on the Mac OS. There were some other shenanigans you can read about in the above links. It was a very successful strategy you can read more about here - enough horrifying content to keep you awake for years. But if that's not enough, you might try these. Microsoft through these lessons evolved a strategy where all their products have to reinforce each other, and that became their core strategy. And then...
Apple got some traction in their TrueType font rendering patent suit against Microsoft and the Justice department was closing in on an antitrust action legendary in its scope and reach. Bill Gates blinked, and they settled, and now there's Mac Office, but you can't say that it's fully supported. The Mac versions lag the Windows versions by some years and are not fully compatible with each other in ways that can't be explained by OS platform differences. The Office platform supports Windows now, as you can see by all the sockpuppets who come out every time somebody mentions some non-Windows operating system to say "you can't get Microsoft Office for that and you never will." And then the rest of us chime in "Application vitualization solves that problem."
Eventually Microsoft discovered political advocacy and contributed in various ways to the installation of a government more supportive of their business activities. Then the enforcement of antitrust protections to limit them and protect us against their abuse of their monopoly became lax, the limits were quashed until those protections expired. But that's another long story for another day.

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Re:Sounds cool....but.. by symbolset · 2012-03-12 21:20 · Score: 0

You can't be serious Mr. AC. OneNote is not Office. Nobody in their right mind would run Microsoft software on their Android or iOS device. Microsoft is desperate to kill Android above all else, for their own survival - and iOS second. Microsoft didn't make the turn to mobile so everything they can't win they must spoil. That's a recipe for disaster.

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Re:Sounds cool....but.. by symbolset · 2012-03-12 21:23 · Score: 0

The 'softie sockpuppets are going to be really harsh with their mods on everything below the parent. There's nothing I can do about that. They're kicking my ass too, so if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

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Help stamp out iliturcy.
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by jimshatt · 2012-03-12 22:22 · Score: 1

Yeah, maybe, but you can hardly argue that not supporting Office for the Mac was illegal, anti-trust wise. MS was not a monopoly back then (quite the contrary), so this was a valid business strategy. Mac users were foolish enough to become locked into a specific vendor at a moment that they did have various other options, office-wise.
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by symbolset · 2012-03-12 23:17 · Score: 1

This is what comes of dealing with the the devil. You get what you asked for, not what you wanted - and it costs your soul.
At that time (the hiatus when Office for Mac was poorly or not supported) - you're righ! - I can't say that was illegal. That's not for me to decide. The courts have found so, but I don't own them. They got away with it, so they won that one for the nonce. To call it a succesful strategy is to stretch it to a general case, and I can't do that.
Your own comment about how foolish they were to enter this trap and glory in their capture tells of your moral sphere. You're OK with what happens to them in the trap if you can convince them to willingly enter. No matter how foul their demise. The temptation to go Godwin's law is pretty extreme here.
You probably can't even imagine why some of us have a problem with that. It's outside your ken. I'm Symbolset. I work in words; they are my stock in trade. To me, words mean things. And yet you and I, we lack a common context, a framework, to build communication on. I'd as easily communicate with a bit of coral or a slice of jade. The words I use mean different things to me than they do to you - and yet we share a common language!

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Help stamp out iliturcy.
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by jimshatt · 2012-03-13 01:06 · Score: 1

Well, their "demise" as you put it, was being forced to look for other options. I don't agree with what MS did, and I totally understand why Mac users did what they did. I just hope people learn from their mistakes (and that of others) so they don't make the same mistake again. Unfortunately evidence points to the contrary.

BTW, how do you know what I am able to imagine or not? You don't know me (clearly). And talk about morality generally makes me, well.. not want to talk anymore. So, good day to you sir!
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by StuartHankins · 2012-03-13 01:58 · Score: 1

It's my understanding that Microsoft Office is available for only 2 platforms, OS X and Windows. Ignoring mobile environments, it is not available for Linux, BSD, UNIX, or other OS's. In the past it was available for older versions of Mac OS. LibreOffice / OpenOffice is an example of a more cross-platform office suite.
Re:Sounds cool....but.. by Dr.+Evil · 2012-03-13 03:31 · Score: 1

Nobody used Windows 1.0. People were using DOS. DOS shipped with every PC and it was funding Microsoft. MS Office only became relevant when WYSWYG became possible on hardware sold at the PC price point, and at that time, the Windows 3.0/3.1 days, MS didn't care about Apple, they cared about Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect.
In 1988, the Mac was a pretty computer used by families who could afford $2k on a computer which wasn't compatible with anyone else's $1k clone.

The big boss was impressed by another demo by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 14:18 · Score: 5, Funny

"Programmeurs, programmeurs, programmeurs, programmeurs, programmeurs!"

Re:The big boss was impressed by another demo by grcumb · 2012-03-12 16:41 · Score: 2

SAM: "Ich bin ein Developer! Developer! Developer! Developer! Developer! Developer! Developer! Developer!STOP 80000X21 OOM_MONKEYDANCE_INFINITE_LOOP"

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Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.

I see where this is headed. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 14:18 · Score: 0

Imagine this tech in a two-way setup. You speak into your smartphone, and it comes out in their language. Then, the person you're talking to speaks into your smartphone and their voice comes out in your language."

So, the logical result of this is that all the phone sex lines suddenly have girls that sound like they're from India?

Re:I see where this is headed. by poetmatt · 2012-03-12 14:51 · Score: 3, Funny

I want to hear a TTS that can turn Punjabi into Valley Girl.
Re:I see where this is headed. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 15:21 · Score: 1

Not possible. Valley girl is uninteligiblatablizable.
Re:I see where this is headed. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 16:04 · Score: 2, Funny

Like as if
Re:I see where this is headed. by mug+funky · 2012-03-12 16:34 · Score: 1

if you read the output of any given chatbot in a valley-girl voice, it will pass the Turing test.
Re:I see where this is headed. by Ghaoth · 2012-03-12 17:48 · Score: 1

All with an American accent no doubt.

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Re:I see where this is headed. by msclrhd · 2012-03-12 20:49 · Score: 5, Informative

Provided that the speech recognition engine is good enough, it can distinguish between the /Q/ and /A/ sounds in lot (British English: /lQt/, General American English: /lAt/), cot, hot, etc, with /A/ also appearing in father /fA:D@/. This will mean that the speech recognition engine will record the actual phonemes spoken, rather than the phonemes it thinks are being spoken. With this, it can then build up a database of phonemes to the recorded audio.
When a given language is selected (strictly speaking it is a language + accent, as Liverpudlian English sounds different to Australian English and Mexican Spanish sounds different to Argentinian Spanish) it will have a set of rules that describe how to convert the text into phonemes specific to that accent (for example, "ook" is usually pronounced /Vk/ in English, but in Scouse English it can be /Vx/). These rules provide a set of phonemes required by the language+accent to speak it properly.
The phonemes are transcriptions of IPA-based phonemes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet). If you plot the phonemes available by the voice on the phoneme charts, you can fill in more phonemes that are similar (e.g. using /A/ instead of /Q/ if the voice does not support /Q/, or an untrilled /r/ if the trilled version is not supported, where a trilled /r/ can be found in Spanish).
Then, provided that the voice can handle all the phonemes in a language+accent, you can then map between the two, allowing your English speaking voice to speak German, Chinese, Afrikaans or whatever language you have data for. The eSpeak text-to-speech program does a simple version of this to make the German, Polish, Swedish, Romanian, Dutch, Hungarian, French and Afrikaans MBROLA voices speak English.
You can also use it to have a voice support different accents, provided you have the rules for producing the correct phonemes.

Looks like the spooks have a new toy...or do they? by storkus · 2012-03-12 14:23 · Score: 1

I don't have them in front of me, but I remember there being patents on this very thing going back quite a few years--some back to the 80's! I also think there was a /. article on it somewhere along the line...

First translation fail by HBI · 2012-03-12 14:24 · Score: 5, Funny

"My hovercraft is full of eels" would have been perfect.

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Re:First translation fail by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 16:12 · Score: 0

I was expecting "Let's set so double the killer delete select all".
Re:First translation fail by mug+funky · 2012-03-12 16:36 · Score: 3, Funny

instead of bobcat, hovercraft contained eels. would not buy again.
Re:First translation fail by martin-boundary · 2012-03-12 17:23 · Score: 2

"My hovercraft is full of eels" would have been perfect.

That's what the low quality garbled voice sounded like. What the Microsoft system actually said was "Hey, google is full of evil".
Re:First translation fail by Elrond,+Duke+of+URL · 2012-03-12 18:42 · Score: 1

Better still:
"We am thy freighter Ursva, six weeks out of Kronos. Over.
We is condemning food, things and... supplies."
I haven't thought about that in years...

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Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max

Do they sound alike? by phantomfive · 2012-03-12 14:25 · Score: 0

They didn't sound alike to me. The example in the link (this one, since there are so many) didn't have translations of the same sentence, each language had different meaning (except maybe Italian, I can't understand that). Also, the translated versions sounded more like a computer than anything. You could say that it sounds more like the original than other computers, but the dominant feature is the computerness of the speech.

But at least they got their research grant.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."

Re:Do they sound alike? by Pseudonym+Authority · 2012-03-12 14:48 · Score: 5, Funny

I completely agree. It is total garbage and if it isn't absolutely flawless in every possible regard, then it should not even have been attempted.
Re:Do they sound alike? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 15:16 · Score: 0

Because research products are always 100% perfect, right?
Re:Do they sound alike? by phantomfive · 2012-03-12 15:16 · Score: 1

I completely agree. It is total garbage and if it isn't absolutely flawless in every possible regard, then it should not even have been attempted.
It's not garbage, and if they had real innovations, it would be nice. Instead, they've taken a few characteristics of a speaker, like pitch, and used those to model the computer voice in another language. It's about as interesting as if someone said, "what would you look like if you were a boy?" (or girl, if you are male), and then sampled your eye color, hair length, nose shape, etc, and then morphed those into a stock photo of a boy. Yeah, it would have some characteristics of you, but it also wouldn't be what you would look like if you were a boy. It would be great as part of some total voice translation package, but they've done the easy part while omitting the hard part. This is my understanding of the situation.

That said, the example in the link is total garbage. They could have made a better demo.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Do they sound alike? by mypalmike · 2012-03-12 15:30 · Score: 1

Yeah, they're just trying to play catch-up with Intellivion's latest technology

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Re:Do they sound alike? by Phics · 2012-03-12 16:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's not garbage, and if they had real innovations, it would be nice. Instead, they've taken a few characteristics of a speaker, like pitch, and used those to model the computer voice in another language.
No, if you listened to the keynote, they took speech characteristics, and then broke the target voice pattern up into 5ms pieces and reconstructed the voice to match a reference translation from a different language. What they are doing is not only very interesting, but clearly has space for improvement and a variety of applications.

It's about as interesting as if someone said, "what would you look like if you were a boy?" (or girl, if you are male), and then sampled your eye color, hair length, nose shape, etc, and then morphed those into a stock photo of a boy. Yeah, it would have some characteristics of you, but it also wouldn't be what you would look like if you were a boy.
That's sort of the point. The sampled voice may not speak fluent Mandarin, but if you'd like it to, this technology will allow it to. A better analogy would be along the lines of taking a computerized sample of your body shape and texture, (skin, hair, face, etc), and then using 3D animation to reconstruct a model of you doing karate, even if you didn't actually know karate.
Eventually, as the 'resolution' improves, the bits of this that you disapprove of, (the computerized feel you are getting from the voice), will most certainly improve as well. But it's the underlying ideas and tech which are interesting here.

--
There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
Re:Do they sound alike? by Phics · 2012-03-12 18:23 · Score: 1

Doubtful. Other researchers will, by trying other techniques, but not these guys. There is nothing interesting here.
Meh... who cares who does it. To reflect back from a prior post...

It would be great as part of some total voice translation package, but they've done the easy part while omitting the hard part. This is my understanding of the situation.
The idea has very little to do with semantically correct translations, and as such it may have less appeal to people more interested in the accurate conveyance of meaning in translation systems. This wasn't a showcase of translations however... it was presented as a way to improve text to speech in multilingual applications, and it doesn't seem like a terrible approach, even if not yet perfectly executed. Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that you were saying it was anything else... you just seem more interested in accurate translations than the actual presentation. Not even saying you're wrong - hey, form follows function. Just saying I think it's valid, even if not of universal interest.

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There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
Re:Do they sound alike? by phantomfive · 2012-03-12 18:38 · Score: 1

No, I don't even think it's a good way of improving text to speech in multilingual applications lol. The biggest problem with text-to-speech in multi-lingual applications is that the computer sounds like a computer. What they did here, making it vaguely resemble one human instead of another human, doesn't fix the primary problem. The art and science of computer speech is still just as bad as it was before.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Do they sound alike? by Phics · 2012-03-12 19:45 · Score: 1

We probably won't agree here, because you don't see any value in the concept. I do, so I'll just let stand my opinion in my first reply and call it a night. I think it's an interesting approach with room for improvement, in much the same way any new technique or idea is introduced and explored. It will develop and turn into something better, either by inspiring someone else, or perhaps by Microsoft making something more of it... or it will be replaced by a better entirely different technique, (I'm guessing you're in support of the latter).
I will admit that looking back I was being a little quixotic in one respect...

Meh... who cares who does it.
...Patents being the way they are these days, I guess I kind of do care who does it.

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There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
Re:Do they sound alike? by umghhh · 2012-03-12 20:45 · Score: 1

this is interesting - it may mean at the end that all human translators will have to pay royalties from now on?
Re:Do they sound alike? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 20:56 · Score: 0

Eventually, as the 'resolution' improves, the bits of this that you disapprove of, (the computerized feel you are getting from the voice), will most certainly improve as well. But it's the underlying ideas and tech which are interesting here.
Doubtful. Other researchers will, by trying other techniques, but not these guys. There is nothing interesting here.
Interesting definitive conclusion from someone who a few posts up completely misunderstood what they do here?
Re:Do they sound alike? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 21:07 · Score: 0

We probably won't agree here, because you don't see any value in the concept. I do, so I'll just let stand my opinion in my first reply and call it a night.
You're kind of missing the point of the previous posts in this thread. What they are saying is not that the concept lacks value, but that this is such an elementary application of this approach that it didn't deserve a research grant, much less the public attention.
This type of study is a good example of why college degrees attempt to provide a "well-rounded" education- if any of these researchers had spent any time studying music and music theory, they could have saved most of their effort and done something which might pan out to be useful in the future. Instead, all they've done is create a really watered-down, very crappy version of "auto-tune" which doesn't even really work as advertised.
Re:Do they sound alike? by makomk · 2012-03-12 22:27 · Score: 1

No, if you listened to the keynote, they took speech characteristics, and then broke the target voice pattern up into 5ms pieces and reconstructed the voice to match a reference translation from a different language. What they are doing is not only very interesting, but clearly has space for improvement and a variety of applications.
Incidentally, if you want to do similar voice matching of text-to-speech yourself I believe that the open source Festvox project has supported doing this for a few years now, though it's not terribly well-documented. See festvox/src/vc/HOWTO. You'll need to record some sample phrases in your own voice for the voice transformation code to work from, but apparently the Microsoft demo requires that too.
Re:Do they sound alike? by phantomfive · 2012-03-13 05:07 · Score: 1

...Patents being the way they are these days, I guess I kind of do care who does it.
lol than teach your kids to not forget the big stuff if they choose to focus on the small stuff.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."

Re:Been done. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 14:32 · Score: 2

Yeah, text translation is exactly the same thing as speech translation. It must have been really hard for Google to get the 'accent, timbe, and intonation' of all that text just right.

Heh by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2012-03-12 14:33 · Score: 2

Remember a couple of weeks ago when we had that story about scifi nitpicks and someone griped about aliens in Star Trek always speaking English?

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"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

Re:Heh by zzzy · 2012-03-13 00:20 · Score: 0

If you follow the recent evolution of technology, every single advancement made seems to be getting us closer to the standard Star Trek complement of gadgets. Handheld tablets are history already. Here goes the universal translator. Next in line - the holodeck.

Given the torment that foreign language class by NotSoHeavyD3 · 2012-03-12 14:50 · Score: 1, Funny

was for me at university anything that could make that go away is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. (Well, that's got to be at least 0 mod but I've got karma to spare so I don't care.)

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Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.

Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 15:01 · Score: 1, Interesting

This technology will hopefully render learning a language obsolete. It's a stupid high school and college requirement. People have the idea that it makes them more worldly, but the world is a huge fucking place with more than your native language and one other language. I never learned a second language, because I saw what a waste it was. I am almost never in a situation where someone else doesn't speak English, even if it's not their native langauge, and it has limited business use since speaking German has little value if you're in Spain, Russia, Africa, Japan, China, Brazil, France, or Iceland.
Not that I'm some kind of xenophobe. I just don't see the payoff after spending 4-8years of your life learning one language (especially since almost everyone I know who studied a language in high school and maybe college forgot it by the time they turned 30).
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by cptdondo · 2012-03-12 15:16 · Score: 3, Informative

Hehe....
I am bilingual in English and another language. When I go to that country, many of the tourist attractions have price lists in English, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, you name it. Then they have one in the local language. The prices on that one are half of what they are for the tourists. And they're written out in words, not numbers, so if you can't read them you're SOL.
So yup, you don't need to speak the other guy's language, if you're willing to play by his rules.
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by phantomfive · 2012-03-12 15:25 · Score: 2

I learned Spanish really well. It took me five years, but I've managed to trick native speakers into thinking I was a native speaker. But it was a lot of work.

Then one day, I went to Spain, and it WAS really great. I could speak with anyone, and I was leading the group, translating for everyone. It lasted a week.

Then I got home, and asked myself, "was that worth the time took learning Spanish?" And the answer is no, no it wasn't, not at all. Even if I travel to a Spanish-speaking country for a week of every year, it was not worth it. It was a lot of work, and I could hire a translator or pay the 'tourist' price for things, and still end up ahead.

That said, I don't regret learning Spanish, but learning it just so you can get a cheaper tourist trap is not worth it at all.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by ChatHuant · 2012-03-12 16:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

That said, I don't regret learning Spanish, but learning it just so you can get a cheaper tourist trap is not worth it at all.
Of course it's not worth it, if all the benefit you find in knowing another language is saving a couple of bucks at some touristy place. But knowing a different language is much more than that. You have now access to new worlds of literature, movies, poetry and music first hand, without a translator to intermediate (because, as the Italians say, "traduttore, traditore"!). You can talk to more people directly, understand their culture, expand your mind. You can read a whole set of new web sites, see different perspectives, or read news that aren't easily available otherwise. It opens lots of new possibilities for you - for example if you want to work for a global company, or if you ever feel like work in a different country for a few years. And even without any of those, the very effort of learning a different language improves your brain and slows mental aging.
I'm relatively fluent in three languages now, and can more or less read another two. I read books in all of them, and I find it really enriches my mind. I just started learning a fourth (Japanese), and am really looking forward to reading Japanese books in their original form (even though learning enough of the kanji characters will be a pain).
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by chaered · 2012-03-12 16:35 · Score: 1

Your experience may be more due to how languages are generally taught at schools. I actually enjoy learning languages, but in retrospect not a lot of the material they fed us in a classroom setting stuck; most of my effective learning was after that. Your brain is pretty good at picking up language in an immersion situation and while talking/hearing about something you are interested in (context memory); reciting random words on paper and getting 3 minutes of teacher interaction per week are pretty much a waste of time. One of the great benefits of a 2nd language (not 3rd etc. but specifically 2nd) is to make you aware of how your own language works; if you have nothing to compare it against, it's like water to a fish. Or (considering this forum) like only ever learning one programming language and working on one platform: it may be fine for earning a wage and getting a large set of stuff done, but even if you spend 90% of your time using that skill set exclusively, you can develop a lot more depth and appreciation of the pros and cons of your chosen environment by spending some quality time in other ones. And, analogously, you can't really get a feel for a technology by reading a book in class and programming "hello world".
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by phantomfive · 2012-03-12 16:40 · Score: 3, Informative

I just started learning a fourth (Japanese), and am really looking forward to reading Japanese books in their original form (even though learning enough of the kanji characters will be a pain).
Might want to check out this book, it is good. And since I'm giving completely unsolicited advice, the exposition of grammar in "Communicating with Japanese by the Total Method" is my favorite of all language textbooks I've seen.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by wrook · 2012-03-12 16:50 · Score: 2

Just a quick tip. Start on kanji as soon as possible. Knowing the kanji creates mnemonics for learning vocabulary. It also helps you decipher new vocabulary that you've never seen before. I wasted a lot of time before I realized that learning the kanji and and vocabulary at the same time is *faster* than learning the vocabulary alone.
One more quick tip while I'm here (somewhat controversial, probably). Completely ignore polite speech until you have a good grasp of the underlying plain form. This is opposite to virtually every textbook on the market, but if you are like me it will save you a lot of time. Polite grammar is a *very* easy to learn extension of plain grammar. But the opposite is not true. If you start thinking using polite grammar you will constantly be making mistakes in the *much* more common plain grammar. Advice to the contrary is to deal with talking with strangers (100% of the speach you are likely to use while travelling). But if you want to learn to speak Japanese rather than just use handy phrases, it is bad advice IMHO. The order presented in Tae Kim's guide is extremely helpful: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/ This isn't all the grammar in the language (by a long shot), but if you learn this you can be relatively fluent in most situations.
Finally, reading manga will show you good conversational patterns. Please keep in mind that some characters have speech affectations that nobody would use in real life. These are easy to spot, though. Reading other material is not nearly as useful for acquiring conversational language in my experience.
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by wrook · 2012-03-12 17:24 · Score: 2

I teach English to Japanese high school students. The vast majority of them will never speak English ever again. Nor will they need to. Here's what I tell them.
Not everyone needs to speak English. If you plan to stay where you are, probably you can avoid having to speak English. This does not imply that learning English is not useful for some people. I live and work in Japan and can do so partly because I speak/read Japanese. Life in Japan is hard if you don't speak and read Japanese. This is true in other places in the world. If you don't speak the language, you will never, ever fit in the way someone who is fluent does.
You don't need to speak any particular language, but being able to learn a language gives you options that other people don't have. It is a skill that can open many doors for you.
One of the advantages of learning a language is that it is easy. That is probably surprising to many people, but the fact of the matter is that it is not difficult to speak English, or Japanese or any other human language. All over the world there are amazingly stupid people who can speak their native language fluently. If you can speak one language, you can easily speak two, or three, or any number of other languages.
Why don't people learn foreign languages if it is so easy? Because, while it is conceptually simple, a language is huge. Learning a language requires persistence, attention to detail, flexibility, the ability to make and admit mistakes and a huge amount of effort. There are techniques that will make the process faster and more pleasant, but in the end language acquisition is a process of personal growth.
While there are some few benefits for knowing a foreign language, it is true that most people neither need nor will realise those benefits. The process of learning a language is another matter altogether, though. The skills required to succeed are the real treasure. Those who avoid learning these skills, which are admittedly a pain to acquire, only hurt themselves. I don't care if my students use English in their lives or not. I teach those other skills *through* English, not *for* English.
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by ChatHuant · 2012-03-12 17:49 · Score: 1

Might want to check out this book, it is good.
Thank you! After reading the reviews, the book seems to match pretty well my initial goal (reading cursively). 99 bucks new is a bit steep, but I'll check my local library, or see if I can get it second hand.
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by phantomfive · 2012-03-12 17:51 · Score: 1

Oh, I didn't realize that was an old edition. The new one is cheaper.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by ChromeAeonium · 2012-03-12 17:53 · Score: 1

I took several different languages. I am admittedly biased in that I'm a dyed in the wool linguaphile, but maybe you just had a shitty professor. In a couple of my classes there were people who wanted nothing to do with learning a language, but a good professor is what made the experience (for them anyway) bearable or even at times enjoyable. Well, as enjoyable as a class can be anyway.
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by ChatHuant · 2012-03-12 17:58 · Score: 1

Just a quick tip. Start on kanji as soon as possible. Knowing the kanji creates mnemonics for learning vocabulary. It also helps you decipher new vocabulary that you've never seen before. I wasted a lot of time before I realized that learning the kanji and and vocabulary at the same time is *faster* than learning the vocabulary alone.
Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. I just finished learning hiragana and katakana, and still practising reading/writing, but I'll try to start on the kanji as soon as possible - even though I expect it'll take me years to become anywhere near fluent :)
My teacher insists on the polite forms (the course is sponsored by the company, and, obviously, they're mainly interested in business interactions), but I try to go beyond that - I expect reading as much as I can will help there.
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by ChatHuant · 2012-03-12 18:02 · Score: 1

Oh, I didn't realize that was an old edition. The new one is cheaper.
Heh, much better, thanks again!
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by ChromeAeonium · 2012-03-12 18:10 · Score: 1

I can't tell if that's an argument against learning a foreign language, or an argument for learning more than one.
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by petsounds · 2012-03-12 20:44 · Score: 1

I'm relatively fluent in three languages now, and can more or less read another two. I read books in all of them, and I find it really enriches my mind. I just started learning a fourth (Japanese), and am really looking forward to reading Japanese books in their original form (even though learning enough of the kanji characters will be a pain).
How do you retain all of them conversationally? Did you grow up multilingual? My non-English skills are continually crumbling from disuse.
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by wrook · 2012-03-12 21:06 · Score: 1

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. I just finished learning hiragana and katakana, and still practising reading/writing, but I'll try to start on the kanji as soon as possible - even though I expect it'll take me years to become anywhere near fluent :)
"Remembering the Kanji" by James Heisig is a useful method for learning kanji. You can download the first third of the book from the publisher as a pdf here. I personally disagree with the order of learning, but the technique is sound. He suggests learning English keywords for all the common kanji before learning Japanese. I don't think that's necessary. Learning it in the same order that Japanese students learn will allow you to read as you learn, which I have found more effective. Also, some of his English keywords are poor (i.e., the character does not commonly have that meaning). The keywords in the kanjidic project are better. You can look at them with the Rikaichan plugin in Firefox among other means.

My teacher insists on the polite forms (the course is sponsored by the company, and, obviously, they're mainly interested in business interactions), but I try to go beyond that - I expect reading as much as I can will help there.
In that case, I think your teacher is probably correct. If you are just a tourist, talking like an impolite child might cause some surprise, but nobody is likely to get seriously upset. In business it's a different matter. You really do need to be polite. Like you say, reading will help you a lot.
I don't really like to pimp out my own software, but we're deep enough in the thread that I hope I don't step on anyone's toes. I have been writing a Japanese study tool called JLDrill http://jldrill.rubyforge.org/ Basically it is a spaced repetition drill program. Other programs like Anki are more flexible and better supported (and easier to install...), but JLDrill has some specific Japanese study tools that you might find helpful. If you like, give it a try. If you have any problems give me a shout.
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 21:14 · Score: 0

You don't need to grow up multilingual.
I'm a French native and didn't learn any other language before middle school. I'm fluent in English, French and Japanese and keep my level in all three because I can use them every day. I think that's the key to keep your skills.
I work in English, watch TV in Japanese and my wife is Japanese, and we live in France. In high school, I was speaking Spanish better than English, but since I didn't practice in 10 years, I can barely speak Spanish now although I can still understand it and read it (it's already easy to do that if you're French even without learning the language).
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by elsurexiste · 2012-03-13 01:05 · Score: 1

I know this won't change your mind, and maybe it only applies to Spanish South America, but still...
A German acquaintance said it find it difficult to speak and convey emotions so intensely as Spanish speakers. He said that, in Spanish, you can speak as if you were singing, with a smile on your face. I guess it has to do with the extra use of vowels...
You speak a language that can do this! Isn't that cool? :)
Unrelated: Maybe you should try Latin America? People there are warmer than Spaniards, and in some places it's hard to find someone who knows English, so your knowledge will come handy.

--
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by phantomfive · 2012-03-13 05:01 · Score: 1

A German acquaintance said it find it difficult to speak and convey emotions so intensely as Spanish speakers. He said that, in Spanish, you can speak as if you were singing, with a smile on your face. I guess it has to do with the extra use of vowels...
lol I think this says more about German than it does about Spanish......

Unrelated: Maybe you should try Latin America? People there are warmer than Spaniards, and in some places it's hard to find someone who knows English, so your knowledge will come handy.
I love Spaniards! There are some really pretty women there too. I lived in El Salvador for a while, and it was fine, and there are many good reasons to learn a language, but learning just so you can save a few bucks in a tourist market is a horrible reason.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by ChatHuant · 2012-03-13 08:40 · Score: 1

How do you retain all of them conversationally? Did you grow up multilingual? My non-English skills are continually crumbling from disuse.
I didn't grow up multilingual as such, but I did start pretty young - my parents got me a private foreign language teacher before I was even in school. She taught me the basics, and then I started reading a lot and that helped me build a vocabulary. Truth is, I wasn't reading in order to improve my language skills - I just liked the books, and wanted to understand what's happening.

I find it's important to keep regular contact with a language, even if the contact is fairly limited - I try to read books in every language I know (the Gutenberg project has been a big help), and to watch a few foreign movies with their original soundtrack from time to time. That's not a perfect solution - I was told my vocabulary is a bit too formal, but web forums help somewhat in keeping track of colloquialisms. Moreover, that doesn't really replace regular conversation practice - I visited France a few years ago and for the first day or so I had a bit of a problem finding my words. If you're interested, there are often groups such as the Alliance Francaise (can't get Slashdot to show the proper c-cedilla) that provide language courses, cultural events or simply people you can practice your language on :)
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by ChatHuant · 2012-03-13 08:42 · Score: 1

I don't really like to pimp out my own software, but we're deep enough in the thread that I hope I don't step on anyone's toes. I have been writing a Japanese study tool called JLDrill http://jldrill.rubyforge.org/ Basically it is a spaced repetition drill program. Other programs like Anki are more flexible and better supported (and easier to install...), but JLDrill has some specific Japanese study tools that you might find helpful. If you like, give it a try. If you have any problems give me a shout.
Thank you! I'll check it out.
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-13 15:25 · Score: 0

Doing something as painful and tedious as learning a new language to keep your brain fit is like waterboarding yourself to increase your pain tolerance.
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-13 19:08 · Score: 0

Waterboarding has nothing to do with pain tolerance. It exploits the drowning reflex. It isn't painful.
Re:Given the torment that foreign language class by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 04:57 · Score: 0

Whatever! I learned to talk Jap in the Navy .. "Hey mamma-san, you makee baby-san daughter fuckie suckie me numbah one! I go px buy you kotex and lucky strikes, ho-kay?"
As for the rest of the world, hey, speak american english or else we'll drop a bomb on you!

Re:microsoft and their credibility by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 14:51 · Score: 0

We? Is that the royal we? Otherwise, who are you speaking for?

Does it do Gorn? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 14:53 · Score: 0

And does it insert the appropriate slurping and hissing sounds? "This is your opponent, earthling. I have heard every word you have said. Jim: All right. What do you want? Gorn: I weary of the chase. Wait for me. I shall be merciful and quick."

Re:Does it do Gorn? by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2012-03-12 15:43 · Score: 1

And, if it does do Gorn - will it blink?

--
#DeleteChrome

Re:microsoft and their credibility by CohibaVancouver · 2012-03-12 14:54 · Score: 2

microsoft is like nestle, never to be trusted again

That reminds me. I need to pick up some chocolate milk powder.

That's fine, but... by FairAndHateful · 2012-03-12 14:59 · Score: 1

...can they explain to me what "do the needful" means? That's English to English, and I don't fully understand the subtext of it.

Re:That's fine, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 15:04 · Score: 0

Just say it to "Do the Hustle," and whistle the tune. You'll never hear it the same way again.
Re:That's fine, but... by jfengel · 2012-03-12 17:48 · Score: 1

It just means "do what needs to be done". There's no particular subtext to it, though I'm sure it's probably more common in some regional dialects than others.
Re:That's fine, but... by Hognoxious · 2012-03-12 21:10 · Score: 1

It means prepare to revert the same.

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:That's fine, but... by FairAndHateful · 2012-03-13 17:06 · Score: 1

Just say it to "Do the Hustle," and whistle the tune. You'll never hear it the same way again.
Oh my, that's going to waste some time of my day, EVERY day, forever.

How Does It Compare With Project Festival? by Freshly+Exhumed · 2012-03-12 15:01 · Score: 1

Isn't this the same thing that Project Festival has been doing since about 2004?

http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/ (try the demo)

--
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.

Just FAIL (pipe dream?) by theNAM666 · 2012-03-12 15:21 · Score: 3, Interesting

1) The translations aren't semantically equivalent (as pointed out by commenters above above). I can already say "Ich bin ein dummer Amerikaner" in my own voice, without machine help. If the meaning isn't there, who cares?

2) The machine accent ain't that great, either.

All of this makes me think this is still somewhat of a pipe dream. The AI guys have been selling the idea of machine translation for years and years-- at least since the 50s, when it was promised to eliminate the need for trained State Department linguists. It's never emerged because it's still a hard problem. Even Google's translate, which beats the MS stuff by some yards, produces results which range from awkward phrasing to just plain inaccurate and misleading.

He's selling a great idea, but it's kind of like the Fountain of Youth. It ain't there, vaporware.

Re:Just FAIL (pipe dream?) by phantomfive · 2012-03-12 15:41 · Score: 1

All of this makes me think this is still somewhat of a pipe dream. The AI guys have been selling the idea of machine translation for years and years-- at least since the 50s, when it was promised to eliminate the need for trained State Department linguists. It's never emerged because it's still a hard problem.
Yeap. If you can't solve the hard problem, solve an easier one that looks similar. That's what these guys have done.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Just FAIL (pipe dream?) by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 16:08 · Score: 0

Why so cynical? Why so "a problem is either solved or there can be no progress towards it"?
Re:Just FAIL (pipe dream?) by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 16:25 · Score: 0

It's a research project you dolt. They aren't trying to "sell" anything. The cynism here is insufferable.
Re:Just FAIL (pipe dream?) by NoKaOi · 2012-03-12 16:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

He's selling a great idea, but it's kind of like the Fountain of Youth. It ain't there, vaporware.
Is he actually trying to sell a mature product, or is he just showing something cool? I'm not sure where the innovation is, if it's in being able to train text-to-speech to sound like your voice, preserving intonations and such across the translation (even though it's obviously not great at it yet), or if it's just in putting a few existing technologies together, but you have speech recognition, and a translator, and text to speech that sounds like your voice, then this is what you can have. Include preserving the intonation and you have something cool. So what if it's just showing off a cool application of existing technologies?
Translators aren't great but are getting better...speech recognition isn't great but is getting better. Preserving intonation across the translation and including in text-to-speech in a voice that sounds kinda like your own can probably get better too. Put the 3 together and you get something useful. I think that's all it's trying to show, and I think as these technologies get better we could end up with something pretty cool.
If this was a something out of any other company, would the same people be criticizing it?
Re:Just FAIL (pipe dream?) by phantomfive · 2012-03-12 16:47 · Score: 1

Why so cynical? Why so "a problem is either solved or there can be no progress towards it"?
It's not that dichotomy. If you read, my meaning was, "these guys are not making progress towards it." That is quite different than saying there can be no progress towards it.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Just FAIL (pipe dream?) by theNAM666 · 2012-03-12 18:07 · Score: 1

>If this was a something out of any other company, would the same people be criticizing i
Ehhn. I dunno. I'll say this. I'll give your answer 10 microLenats.

Re:microsoft and their credibility by Ethanol-fueled · 2012-03-12 15:28 · Score: 5, Funny

My employer is a Microsoft shop. Microsoft Windows Seven optimizes my productivity with its new context-sensitive search. Microsoft Office allows me to quickly compose documents and spreadsheets of arbitrary complexity.

It is no surprise that Excel is being used for engineering given its power and flexibility. Hell, a shop I worked for used Excel as its database.

Now let's get down the the nitty-gritty - Visual Studio is one of the most powerful IDEs on the face of the planet. You want power? You got it. You want speed? You got it. You want both? It empowers you, the ninety-pound weakling, with both, with minimal effort. I got a raise because I used Visual Studio. I got my dick sucked by my boss' hottest secretary because I wrote an patch in C# that prevented our ERP system from total meltdown.

Why be some boring open-source ODBC slob when you can be fast. Quick. Nimble. Packing.

Be potent. Be Microsoft.

The Future of International Business by guttentag · 2012-03-12 15:42 · Score: 2

American Businessman (via translated phone call): "I think we can safely say our company would like to use your factory to produce our useless stuff people think they need."
Chinese Businessman (via translated phone call): "An excellent idea! I suggest we sign the papers over dinner at Translate Server Error. They have the best HuMan chicken in town. And the owner prides himself on his bilingual staff."

So, two problems.

One, our text translation software isn't foolproof, but people expect it to be. What happens when the software confuses "galleta" (Spanish for "cookie") with "callate" (Spanish for "shut up"). They do sound similar if you say them out loud, but no one notices because you'd almost never use both in the same conversation. I foresee someone attempting a friendly gesture by offering to share her mother's recipe for "shut up."

Two, live conversations depend upon both parties building on a shared experience. If each one has a different account of the experience, conversations break down very quickly. Ever tried to carry on a conversation with a schizophrenic? And that's just assuming the errors are innocent. What happens when corporations start using this? Your bank requires you to call a number to activate your new card and during the call they have the software "translate" some required disclosure for you, only the translation doesn't really convey what they are supposed to be disclosing. Don't think it won't happen... whoever implements this first on purpose will be running the company one day.

Then again, this whole discussion is purely academic. Gene Roddenberry's estate will just claim prior art and prevent this from ever becoming a reality. Hopefully.

Re:The Future of International Business by malakai · 2012-03-12 16:48 · Score: 3, Informative

. I foresee someone attempting a friendly gesture by offering to share her mother's recipe for "shut up."

Context is context. Obviously, an English speaker hearing a Spanish speaker offer to share a recipe for "shut up" on a (up until this point) benign and friendly conference call is going to assume translation error. Better than that, translation software knows about these little mix ups better than you do. On a Text To Speech, there's not much to do but suffer the mis-translation ( or maybe they play an audble 'ping' when they warn about a context or idiosyncrasy error), but in a system that displays you something on a device, these things tend to be shaded a different color, and offer options as to what other possible meaning they may have meant, based on context.

One, our text translation software isn't foolproof, but people expect it to be.
No, they don't. No one even expects paid human translators to be perfect.

Two, live conversations depend upon both parties building on a shared experience. If each one has a different account of the experience, conversations break down very quickly. Ever tried to carry on a conversation with a schizophrenic?
Honestly, with a schizophrenic, chances are I have, at some point in my life, on IRC. But more to your point, i've played games where opposing sides are communicating from different languages via google translate. Think Russia vs US, and the only way to talk to them is via delayed google translate results. It's slow, it's tedious, and yet we somehow managed to have amazing rapport with people of like mind. The assholes were still assholes via google translate, and the people we wanted to work with we managed to communicate with. Again, you are ignoring the fact than incrementally better translation is still better than it's predecessor. For now. Sure, one day we'll identify some uncanny valley with voice translation, and we'll all spend lots of time plotting how bad the translation software has to be for us to feel it's robotic.... but for now, any small step forward is better than the previous one.

Then again, this whole discussion is purely academic. Gene Roddenberry's estate will just claim prior art [memory-alpha.org] and prevent this from ever becoming a reality. Hopefully.
Yup, god forbid someone spends time and money on a problem that sci-fi writers got to magically make disappear in one sentence, and a prop. Maybe someday some brilliant young chap will figure out how to make warp drive not require 3x the mass of the universe for power, and Gene's children can make some more cash. Hopefully.

--
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage

The biggest FAIL by oGMo · 2012-03-12 16:05 · Score: 1

3) You have to train it for an hour?

I was actually slightly interested until I got to this bit and realized, like any other Microsoft "innovation," it wasn't really at all. Anyone can make a custom voice sample in about an hour. Hooking up simple voice recognition and text-to-speech is incredibly dull.

Had they actually interpreted intonation for semantics, and simulated and learned your voice in real time, it would have been pretty neat.

--

Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage

Re:The biggest FAIL by dave420 · 2012-03-12 22:01 · Score: 1

Shut down innovation, folks, as nothing's perfect! Close it down, boys, and head back to the caves.
Seriously, this is a ridiculously-early look at the technology. Calling it a fail is incredibly premature. FUD's not cool when anyone spreads it, remember?
Re:The biggest FAIL by makomk · 2012-03-12 22:34 · Score: 1

It isn't exactly innovative, though - there have been ways of adapting TTS voices to sound like a particular speaker that require less training than this for years. There's even an open source implementation of it in Festvox.

Re:microsoft and their credibility by binarylarry · 2012-03-12 16:06 · Score: 0

Oops you posted on the wrong account bonch.

--
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!

This place is a tomb. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 16:11 · Score: 0

I'm going to the nut shop where its fun.

Re:microsoft and their credibility by philip.paradis · 2012-03-12 16:21 · Score: 2

Stay thirsty, my friend.

--
Write failed: Broken pipe

Partnership by microbee · 2012-03-12 16:44 · Score: 1

Microsoft Research comes up with a prototype that barely works. Apple wraps it up and gives it a foreign name and sells it like crazy.

Is the title correct? by chrism238 · 2012-03-12 17:03 · Score: 1

I'm confused - isn't this speech-to-speech translation, without any text involved?

Re:Is the title correct? by msclrhd · 2012-03-12 21:06 · Score: 1

Speech in Language 1 by the user gets converted internally to text using speech recognition software. This then passes through a Language 1 to Language 2 translation program. The text in Language 2 then gets spoken using text-to-speech software using a voice created from the user's own voice. The bit in the middle is transparent to the user, which is why it looks like speech-to-speech.

Fools by a_hanso · 2012-03-12 17:04 · Score: 2

Do you know who the scientist is? Because of this man's work, his grandson will never be able to get Data to pronounce contractions properly.

Put this on an implantable chip... by AtomicSymphonic · 2012-03-12 17:12 · Score: 1

Somehow work out all the technicalities... and "Universal Translators" will come to be. Speak any language at will!

Re:Put this on an implantable chip... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 22:42 · Score: 0

And on that note - Microsoft - clearly there is prior art (although non-working) here. No fancy patent for this idea to be had.
Re:Put this on an implantable chip... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-13 03:32 · Score: 0

That's an oxymoron, the patent is specifically for how it works.

Mod up! by KeensMustard · 2012-03-12 17:38 · Score: 1

+1 xkcd/slashdot meme mashup

Translations We'd Like to See: by Greyfox · 2012-03-12 17:47 · Score: 1

Monty Python's Entry:
I will not buy this record; it is scratched.
I will not buy this TOBACCONIST, IT is scratched!
Would you laaahik... would you LIKE to come back to my place, bouncy bouncy?
My nipples explode with delight!
Aah just go watch it yourself! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6D1YI-41ao

Frank Zappa's entry:

This is my left hand.
This is my right hand.
I have a big bunch of dick.
Aah, just go watch it yourself! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkCYJ6FK0T4

Isn't teh internets great?

--

I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

Accent? by Chrisq · 2012-03-12 19:20 · Score: 1

Accent?
The summary says "preserving the accent, timbre, and intonation of your actual voice". Now i can get timbre and intonation but accent? It made me wonder what does Mandarin with a Scottish accent sound like, does it apply Scottish speech tones, which would make it unintelligibly, or is it clever enough to find a social equivalent, maybe an accent of a small semi-autonomous region of China?

Unfortunately checking TFA reveals this "accent" part to be the slashdot reporter's fantasy.

I don't see the need for all the 'training'... by ThePromenader · 2012-03-12 19:28 · Score: 1

...as there exists already an international phonetic alphabet, an alphabet that includes annotations for lilts, gutteral intonations and such. Why not just add the IPA pronunciation of each word to a given language dictionary, and have the computer read that? This would greatly reduce the 'training' work needed by the end user. It would also open new possibilities for text-to-speech translation, or even speech-to-speech translation.

To date I have found no text-to-speech reader on any platform that can understand (and speak) IPA symbols.

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Re:I don't see the need for all the 'training'... by grouchomarxist · 2012-03-12 20:10 · Score: 1

The training has to handle the way real people speak as opposed to the idealized way the words are transcribed. The sounds of words change when they are pronounced in a single sentence as opposed to individually. A single word is often pronounced multiple ways in a single English sentence. The IPA dictionary is also unlikely to be able to handle accents. From that article on the IPA it mentions that not all tones are supported. Chances are there are various other phonemes that the IPA doesn't support.
Above all that I bet that this approach is something that has been tried and failed, probably many years ago.
Re:I don't see the need for all the 'training'... by msclrhd · 2012-03-12 21:16 · Score: 1

The closest text-to-speech program today is eSpeak which uses an ASCII variant of IPA phonemes. The problem with this is that it has a voice for each language (which is essentially the same voice) with a subset of the IPA phonemes available. I am intending to use IPA fully in my own text-to-speech program and associated voices (http://rhdunn.github.com/cainteoir/) but haven't gotten to implementing the text to phoneme and phoneme to audio parts yet, nor the associated tools for working with them and the different phoneme transcription schemes.
Re:I don't see the need for all the 'training'... by Ksevio · 2012-03-13 04:23 · Score: 1

IPA symbols are tricky because they're not standard ASCII. the SAMPA alphabet takes the IPA symbols and replaces them with 1-2 ASCII characters. There are a few TTS readers that are capable of speaking SAMPA symbols.

Microsoft voice recognition, because it just works by citizenr · 2012-03-12 19:59 · Score: 1

Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all

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Re:microsoft and their credibility by Robert+Zenz · 2012-03-12 20:11 · Score: 1

I got my dick sucked by my boss' hottest secretary because I wrote an patch in C# that prevented our ERP system from total meltdown.

Let me guess, that was two weeks ago and the ERP system was also from Microsoft? ;)

Translation quality? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 20:28 · Score: 0

I *really* hope it's better than Bing Translate, which at best produces slightly confusing translations, and at worst totally incomprehensible crap.

Re:microsoft and their credibility by Hognoxious · 2012-03-12 20:37 · Score: 1

The first paragraph sounded like it should be in the voice of those youtube videos like the one with the "webscale" bears.

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Theatrical review, circa 1599 by Hognoxious · 2012-03-12 20:48 · Score: 2

Verily, theis latest so-called play of Mr Shakespeare sucketh most bigge. Knoweth he notte that ye Romans (and may I be flayed with my own fibbling-cloth if Julius Caesar weare notte such) spake ye Latin?

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Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."

Re:Been done. by blackest_k · 2012-03-12 21:31 · Score: 1

I know this is slightly off topic but why doesn't google translate have 4 boxes?
if you are translating language a to language b then any reply is likely to be in language b and need to be translated to language a.

A bit of history would also be useful so you could scroll back up the conversation too.

Still google translate is pretty good as long as you avoid ambiguous phrasing.

I'm not sure if microsoft is achieving anything of use here. The intonation and tone of a sentence of one language maybe completely different to the target language. Even taking a simple example of british english and australian English. British English tends to finish a sentence on a downward tone while australian English tends to rise reproducing the British English tone would not result in an Australian sounding sentence.

What Microsoft may have achieved is a blocking move, if they can register patents changing the intonation of Speech in machine translation then a third party who achieves good or excellent machine translation, good enough to sound like a native speaker and who changes intonation to reflect the mood of the speaker will be forced into paying microsoft for their patents.

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Re:Been done. by monkeyhybrid · 2012-03-12 21:45 · Score: 1

Google Translate does speech translation on Android and actually does it rather well, although the UI could be much improved.

ITS CALLED A BABELFISH by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 22:26 · Score: 0

...

Would have watched the video... by tenco · 2012-03-12 22:31 · Score: 3, Insightful

... if only my software could translate a bytestream of type video/x-ms-asf into a video.

In light of this experience, why should i believe that someone actually invented a unidirectional universal translator? Nice try.

Re:Would have watched the video... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-13 01:43 · Score: 0

My microsoft-provided software could translate that bytestream, but wouldn't let me seek ahead of what was buffered, and wouldn't let me fast forward until the entire stream was downloaded.
Suffice to say, I lost interest.

Re:Been done. by icebraining · 2012-03-12 23:05 · Score: 1

I know this is slightly off topic but why doesn't google translate have 4 boxes?
if you are translating language a to language b then any reply is likely to be in language b and need to be translated to language a.

You can switch the languages around with a single click on a button (I'd post the symbol if /. wasn't broken). Having four boxes would just make the layout confusing for new users, in my opinion.

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Nice to see the predictable /. responses by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 23:25 · Score: 0

"It's Microsoft; let's find a way to convince everyone this is trash". Then add obligatory references to anti-trust, quality of MS OSes, and how MS are doomed to failure.

Security? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-12 23:43 · Score: 0

This seems like it's just a short distance away from being able to make a computer impersonate somebody in their own voice and say things they would never say themselves.

Re:Security? by amliebsch · 2012-03-13 03:33 · Score: 1

My voice is my passport. Verify me.

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Learning a language is NOT easy by Viol8 · 2012-03-13 00:09 · Score: 2

"One of the advantages of learning a language is that it is easy."

For you maybe, not for me. I spent 6 months trying to learn german 5 days a week because I was visiting there on holiday. Got nowhere. Some people have a talent for learning languages, others don't.

"All over the world there are amazingly stupid people who can speak their native language fluently"

Thats because children are coached in their own language 7 days a week 12 hours a day and yet it still takes 5 years until they can put together even a rudimentary sentence.

Re:Learning a language is NOT easy by wrook · 2012-03-13 03:18 · Score: 1

First, let me assure you that your feeling is normal. You are almost certainly *not* language-learning-challenged, as much as you may fear that you are. I can't write as much as I would like to in a Slashdot posting, and you likely wouldn't read it anyway, but I'll try to shine a light on where I think you're having difficulty.
I want to point out that 5 year-olds are extremely fluent in their native language. They have all the basic grammar and a vocabulary of 4-6 thousand words. This is not enough to have a normal adult conversation, but it is more than enough to function. But you are right. They do not have the language ability of adults. By the time a child is 12, they will know more than 20,000 words. Adults know many tens of thousands of words. In comparison, a 5 year old knows nothing.
People have their expectations set incredibly badly by our education system. How long does it take to learn 6000 words? Realistically, years. And even then you'll be lucky to speak like a 5 year old. That's OK. Speaking like a 5 year old is fantastic! You can do any practical thing you want to do. What you *can't* do is function like an adult with a 60,000 word vocabulary and facility with advanced grammar. Most people can't remember what it was like when they were 5 and so are extremely disappointed with their language ability, even when they work extremely hard.
I know that you think 5 days a week studying for 6 months should get you x% of the way to learning the language (where x is significant), but that is kind of naive. Our 5 year old child would only learn 500 words in that time, and that's studying 24/7. To top it all off, 500 words will give you no actual facility with the language in any real life context. The fact that you worked really hard for such a long time made you believe that you *should* succeed, and you appear not to have succeeded (though I will dispute that).
In my post, I didn't mean to imply that learning a language would be quick. What I meant was that anyone of normal, and even considerably below normal intelligence can learn a language. It is not complex in the way that calculus is complex. Everyone can do it. It also doesn't mean that everyone will do it. Most will not, because it is a gigantic pain in the ass.
Where you are running into trouble is that your expectations were set badly. Also, studying 7 days a week is considerably more effective than studying 5 days a week, even if your overall time is less. But more than all of that is the fact that you gave up after only 6 months. You could speak like a 6 month year old baby (i.e., not at all) and so you didn't continue. Language learning requires you to be more patient than that. It requires you to believe that you will ultimately succeed, even if you don't see any immediate improvement. It requires that you study consistently and prioritize your study, regardless of your circumstances. It requires that you find ways to keep yourself motivated and keep your spirits high, even if you make mistake after mistake after mistake. It requires you to push forward even when your success doesn't match your imaginings.
The point to my previous post was that these skills are invaluable in life, whether or not you become fluent in a particular language.
It's a difficult thing to communicate in a posting like this, and I fear I may not have succeeded. I felt exactly that same way as you one time. I spent 13 years at school learning French. At the end of it I couldn't even have the most basic conversation. I never did learn French, but now I am fluent in Japanese (both speaking and reading) -- not at an adult level, but maybe somewhere around a 10 year old level. The only time I speak English anymore is at my job (or posting on Slashdot). But far more than learning Japanese, learning how to learn a language was incredibly valuable. If you can ever spare the time, I encourage you to try again.
If you made it this far, I just want to point out that adult learners of langua
Re:Learning a language is NOT easy by Viol8 · 2012-03-13 03:57 · Score: 1

Well fair enough, but I supopse there are different definitions of easy. It could be easy in the sense that its possible for almost anyone given enough time (like building your own house) , but not in the sense of you'll manage it in a week. Problem is I only had time when I was commuting to learn german from a book and some mp3's, its not like I had anyone to practice with 24/7 like you do when speaking japanese. There's only so far you can go with a language on your own. Beyond that , unless you live surrounded by the language on a daily basis you're stuck speaking it like a baby.
Re:Learning a language is NOT easy by SoTerrified · 2012-03-13 08:47 · Score: 1

"One of the advantages of learning a language is that it is easy."
For you maybe, not for me. I spent 6 months trying to learn german 5 days a week because I was visiting there on holiday. Got nowhere. Some people have a talent for learning languages, others don't.
I would assume you failed to speak German because people were speaking English to you. I once thought the way you do (I don't have a talent for languages) until I took a 6 month contract in Brazil doing wiring and electronics for a large installation. I spoke no Portuguese when I arrived. But the only ones who spoke English to me were the company translator (who was often busy so only available for a few hours a week) and the sister of one of the Brazilians who I worked with, who met me a couple of times so she could practice her English. Armed with an English-Portuguese dictionary, and the people on site who were only speaking Portuguese to each other, by the time I left, I was fluent enough to shop, order in a restaurant, make small talk and curse the Argentinians. :) Seriously, the secret was immersion, being willing to have people laugh at me when I would parrot them and having people around me who were patient.
Re:Learning a language is NOT easy by wrook · 2012-03-14 19:25 · Score: 1

A lot of the current research points at reading as being a very effective means of language acquisition. You have to read a lot, though (more than most people would do -- 2-4 million words a year). Choosing books at an appropriate level is also difficult. People almost universally choose books at a level that is far too high. People who have learned a language up to the level of a 5 year old are considered "advanced" speakers (6,000 words of vocabulary and all the basic grammar). They are often dismayed when they can't even read a book aimed at elementary school children (which is, by definition, far above their level). I'm lucky in that Japan has a vibrant comic book culture and I can find a huge number of level appropriate, conversationally oriented books to read. Unfortunately a lot of language learners consider doing these kinds of things somehow beneath them and childish.
I appreciate you having read all my long typing :-) I think you are correct that I need to find a more appropriate word where I'm using "easy". I'll have to think about it. I just want to reiterate that you *can* learn another language to a very high level of fluency. Just keep in mind that most of the language learning educational system is stuck behind ancient and largly inefficient methods of language acquisition. I teach English to Japanese kids as my day job. My colleagues are all fluent in English. I often ask them if the method of learning they teach was effective for them in acquiring English. Without exception, they say that their success in learning English came by a completely different method. Don't be afraid to throw the textbook out (or rather, unless you are finding it is working for you, please throw it out -- it will only slow you down). All you require to learn a language is that you understand what you are hearing/reading, that you get enough volume of input to learn at a reasonable rate, and that you get enough repetition at the correct times to retain what you've learned. I have found that a dictionary, grammar dictionary and a huge pile of books is enough. There are, of course, other things you need to do for pronunciation, etc (I do karaoke in Japanese, watch TV, etc, etc), but you are really only limited by your imagination.
Re:Learning a language is NOT easy by NotSoHeavyD3 · 2012-03-15 14:23 · Score: 1

So wait. You mean having someone read something like "The Stranger" in a 4th semester class is overkill of sorts? (Yes, that's one of the books they had us read. Have I ever mention I consider it one of the worst books I've ever read and I was happy when I found out Camus got killed in a car crash?) Then again I had the sneaking suspicion that their expectations of what one should be able to do after 4 semesters were hugely optimistic. (So much so I've had the opinion that anybody that got an A in the 4th semester was either a 1st or 2nd class cheater.)

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Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.

Over the years by rinoid · 2012-03-13 00:37 · Score: 1

Microsoft has shown more than it has shipped, and that is bad.

Book burning, anyone? by halfkoreanamerican · 2012-03-13 01:05 · Score: 1

Now I have no reason to learn another language ever!

All fine and good, but... by cpghost · 2012-03-13 01:20 · Score: 1

... when released, will it run on Linux? Or will it be open-sourced?

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cpghost at Cordula's Web.

Babelfish by XrayJunkie · 2012-03-13 01:49 · Score: 1

Just put a fish into your ear!
Works for all non-terrestrial languages

Been there, done that. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-13 02:16 · Score: 0

While the vocal effects are nice, the language translation capability is nothing new. I saw someone demonstrate that 4 or 5 years ago at JavaOne in San Francisco.

Same thing happened about 2 years ago when a Microsoft commercial highlighted a Windows Phone app that popped up information on top of the live camera input. That technology was patented 4 or 5 years ago by someone working with Boeing.

Microsoft frequently takes other peoples technology, wraps a pretty interface around it, and demonstrates it to great fanfare and applause.

Remember, Microsoft originally said running a language within a Virtual Machine (ala Java and the JVM) was a terrible idea, then a few years later came out with C# and the CLR.

Re:Been done. by blackest_k · 2012-03-13 04:51 · Score: 1

2 instances works as well (2 tabs) but your always going to have to wait longer than its possible to achieve. There is probably an api for google translate which would give you the option to create a more advanced page.

Still there is no real substitute to learning the 2nd language if you need it regularly.

Cue brain on android is pretty good for vocabulary building, lots of flash cards and with the right language plugin spoken words too.
(asked one of the developers for the option to just speak the words, rather than having you read them and translating and it should be implemented in a new release before too long)

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dreadful translation (or mis-linked files) by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-13 06:44 · Score: 0

on the english and the italian don't seem to match at all. The Italian starts "beginning next month, we will be beginning an italian ^&*&*&^8, which will take into consideration books of contemporary italian writers..."

That's not what Rashid is saying in english (at least not on my machine).

The video is not about translation! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-13 07:33 · Score: 0

I had a peek at the video and it strikes me that the demo is not about translation at all. It merely shows a TTS system that can be tweeked to sound like any person. Even if this person does not speak the language synthesized.

Re:microsoft and their credibility by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-03-13 08:24 · Score: 1

Why be some boring open-source ODBC slob when you can be fast.

That should be "open-source X/Open SQL CLI slob", given that ODBC is a Microsoft term for (more or less) the same thing.
</pedant>

Otherwise epic.

Miri by infotechideas · 2012-03-13 08:49 · Score: 1

Will Microsoft come up with its own Siri?

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Interesting Technology Ideas!

Try something real by happyfeet2000 · 2012-03-13 11:13 · Score: 1

We sometimes do Spanish-Mandarin translations. This is our process: We stopped doing a direct Spanish-Mandarin translation with Google due to awful results, now we first use Google translate to go from Spanish to English. Then we correct English translation manually. Using Google Translate again, go from Engish to Mandarin. Have a Chinese person correct the translation manually.

I can't even imagine this new system working for more than a few simple and straightforward phrases.

hour training, both ways? by dfries · 2012-03-13 11:14 · Score: 1

Aren't they completely missing the point when they list an hour of training? If it takes an hour to understand me enough to translate it into another language it's going to take another hour for them to train to be able to respond (either it requires training for a person or it doesn't). That makes it pointless, good luck finding a local to spend an hour talking to a computer so they can answer your simple question.

Professor? What's that? by NotSoHeavyD3 · 2012-03-13 13:22 · Score: 1

Where I went to university they told us how important a language was. I might have believed it if it weren't for the fact language professors only rarely taught any of the first few semester courses. Considering I got stuck taking 9 courses of language to complete the 4th semseter requirement you'd think I would have seen more than 1 class taught by a foreign language professor. (BTW yes, it was literally one. Instead we got very wet behind the ear grad students. If it's really important then don't have the class taught by the least qualified people you can find.)

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50 years too late by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 11:34 · Score: 0

french turned me into a business major

Context and Implication by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-14 13:13 · Score: 0

The problems with all translations is context and implication within languages. Some languages have no gender specific pronouns, which is important in implication. ie the sentence 'Paul and Betty met on the bridge and he killed her.' is fine till translated into a language without gender specific pronouns 'Paul and Betty met on the bridge and they killed them.' (Had a similar sentence in a book I read where it was two men that met on the bridge and both were never mentioned in the book again, so was left wondering who had killed who). In some languages you know what is happening due to the context, and if person A sends person B an SMS and they phone and just say, 'I am Coming' [meaning they are on their way NOW], in a language that has no difference in present and future tense it could get translated into English as 'I'm am coming' or 'I will be coming' - or if they (or some with no difference in past and presence tense it could get rendered as 'I've come', 'Iam coming.') The phone has no context in order to translate it, though the speakers do. Then there are languages late lack certain verbs, like 'To Be'. There was a famous (though not sure if true) story of Margaret Thatcher using a supposedly 'perfect' Japanese translation device who said, 'To be, or not to be, that is the question.' The Japanese equivalent for 'to be' is 'desu', whcih is literally, 'it exists' or 'it is'. The translation back into English from the Japanese she put in came back as 'It is, it isn't, what is the question.'

Slashdot Mirror

Microsoft Shows Off Adaptive, Multilingual Text to Speech System

171 comments