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Microsoft Shows Off Adaptive, Multilingual Text to Speech System

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the still-no-sign-of-warp-drives dept.

MrSeb writes about a really cool project from Microsoft's speech research group. From the article: "Microsoft Research has shown off software that translates your spoken words into another language while preserving the accent, timbre, and intonation of your actual voice. In a demo of the prototype software, Rick Rashid, Microsoft's chief research officer, said a long sentence in English, and then had it translated into Spanish, Italian, and Mandarin. You can definitely hear an edge of digitized 'Microsoft Sam,' but overall it's remarkable how the three translations still sound just like Rashid. The translation requires an hour of training, but after that there's no reason why it couldn't be run in real time on a smartphone, or near-real-time with a cloud backend. 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." The Techfest 2012 keynote has a demo of the technology around minute 13:00.

9 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. The big boss was impressed by another demo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  2. Re:But I miss Microsoft Sam! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

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

  3. First translation fail by HBI · · Score: 5, Funny

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

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    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    1. Re:First translation fail by mug+funky · · Score: 3, Funny

      instead of bobcat, hovercraft contained eels. would not buy again.

  4. Re:Do they sound alike? by Pseudonym+Authority · · 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.

  5. Given the torment that foreign language class by NotSoHeavyD3 · · 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.
  6. Re:I see where this is headed. by poetmatt · · Score: 3, Funny

    I want to hear a TTS that can turn Punjabi into Valley Girl.

  7. Re:microsoft and their credibility by Ethanol-fueled · · 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.

  8. Re:I see where this is headed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Like as if