One Step Toward a Babel Fish: Real-Time Voice Translation For Phones

the_newsbeagle writes "Douglas Adams's fictional Babel fish, which lived in the brain and could translate any language in the universe, was so incredibly useful that it simultaneously proved and disproved the existence of God. This real-time translation app for mobile phones, offered by the Japanese telecom company NTT DoCoMo, isn't going to freak out theologians any time soon. The company admits it has lots of work to do to improve translation accuracy, and it can currently only translate between Japanese and three languages: English, Korean, and Mandarin. But by allowing phone calls to pierce the language barrier, we just might have taken a step toward the universe that Adams envisioned: one where open communication between people of different cultures leads to an onslaught of terrible bloody warfare."

Comments

Sounds like a step backwards to me

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

When machines start translating languages on the fly, people will stop learning other languages and that's a bad thing.

Right now, English is the de-facto lingua franca of the world, because peoples need to talk to each other for business purposes. I reckon that need alone goes a long way to (mostly) maintain world peace, because when someone learns a foreign language, they're also exposed to a foreign culture. Machine translators don't expose those who use them to other cultures.

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[AchilleTalon]

Well, the only problem is everyone has to learn English and its culture, but no one from English speaking countries really need to learn others languages and cultures. So, it's not exactly a good thing neither.

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. It was because I was able to access content in my native language that I was more interested in learning about the culture of other countries. The easier it is to communicate with foreign people, the easier it is to learn about their culture. I really dislike the narrow-minded view that a nation's culture is only accessible through its native language. (I live in Quebec)

15 years ago, I saw Akira in English. Throughout the years, I saw more Japanese animations, I read manga, I read documentaries, I learned some of the words and some of the characters. I also read a little about the history. I watched documentaries, etc. All of these things, all in English, they made a foreign culture more accessible to me, they allowed me to understand Japan a little better even if I couldn't speak the language.

If one day I can converse with someone that speaks a foreign language and share with him or her our culture without having language be a barrier, that would be very good. Isn't that exactly what Star Trek showed us? The universal translator broke down the barrier of language, so that different species could share their own culture more easily, more freely.

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[ShanghaiBill]

When machines start translating languages on the fly, people will stop learning other languages and that's a bad thing.

Good machine translation is a big help when learning a foreign language, so this might encourage more people to give it a try. I use Chrome's speech-to-text to practice speaking Mandarin. It is not a complete substitute for an actual Mandarin speaking human, but a human isn't always available. Maybe the technology in TFA could be adapted to language learners, and let them know when their pronunciation is a little off, and guide them toward clearer expressions.

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[phantomfive]

Hogwash. Wars exist because they serve someone's interests (be it to sell weapons, to expand borders or to keep the people occupied).

Yes, but if you understand each other's culture, you can more often find a way to meet everyone's interests without starting a war.

I'll give you an example I heard from Bob Woodward....During the Falkland's war, Argentina was more aggressive than they should have been, in part because the people thought America would be on their side (for various reasons). However, he met some people who had lived as foreign exchange students in America, and those people realized America would not help Argentina. If more people had realized that, Argentina might have avoided a pointless war.

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[Cryacin]

No, they don't need to learn other languages. THEY JUST NEED TO SPEAK ENGLISH LOUDER!!!

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[citizenr]

When machines start translating languages on the fly, people will stop learning other languages and that's a bad thing.

I TOTALLY AGREE, just like written word made humans stop remembering things!

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[Cryacin]

Using google translate: This paragraph is written in English, translated to Japanese and back to English to illustrate the previous post This translated into a paragraph, in order to explain the previous articles that have been written in English, Japanese and back to English. You know what? Given enough text, I still would find the result of the English retranslation more useful than a human written version of the Japanese.

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[Mashiki]

When machines start translating languages on the fly, people will stop learning other languages and that's a bad thing.

That's not really true. I can speak English, German, a good bit of Japanese( know about 40% of the syntax). But it'll probably take me another 3 years or so to learn it. My uncle who travels to Japan regularly for work can't grasp it, can't wrap his head around it. . He struggled with english. Though his job requires him to be able to travel all around the world fixing million dollar machinery, setting it up, tearing it down and doing repairs.

Luckily in every place he's been, people have been exceptionally accommodating of this, especially in places where no one speaks english. Even if he could learn the language of wherever he was going, there's no way he'd be able to learn and grasp 90+ languages. And while english is the defacto business language(and it's taught pretty much everywhere) that doesn't stop cultural cross-communication issues either.

Machine language translations are a good way to allow people to talk, for those that can't, or unable to grasp another language. And it does get harder as you get older, and not everyone is lucky enough to live in a multilingual country or city-state like Singapore.

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[chaos_technique]

Cant see how. Or very incompletely. Have you got any language besides English? (not trolling, I'm trying to see if your comment is biased in a way or another)

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[OolimPhon]

One of the reasons English has become a world language is that it is relatively easy to make yourself understood even if you speak it badly.

For some bizarre reason it doesn't seem to matter what your subset of the language is or how bad your accent is, it is usually possible to find enough common words to get your point across.

Whether this is because of the multiple language base, the almost non-existant grammar (as compared, say, to Latin) or the constant borrowing from other languages I don't know, but it works.

Try that in another language, be it French, German, Russian, Arabic or Mandarin and you'll find it much harder to make your point unless you can conform quite closely to your listener's grammar and accent. From personal experience your listener will let you get half a sentence out then prompt you to switch to English!

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[Joce640k]

Cant see how.

Agree. In any pair of languages there's a lot of words/phrases which simply can't be translated without cultural references.

This is where machines can't help (in fact they'll probably make things worse). Automatic translation is a noble goal but I don't think it can ever be a substitute for the real thing where there's a big difference in culture.

It can work for limited cases of course: eg. The language needed for ordering 10,000 widgets by next Tuesday should be machine-translatable. OTOH the small-talk most salesmen engage in before the sale will probably lead to global warfare if attempted.

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[ciderbrew]

Used Google translate app on my phone with the Japaneses in laws. It worked a treat. Short direct sentences requiring short direct answers. What business meeting wouldn't you love to have just that. Hours reduced to minutes ust to get round the "short fall" of the app not being able to translate utter shit.

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[Eponymous Hero]

also agree. try jewish and israeli culture. there are words and phrases in hebrew that have no translation to anything in english. this ac is hopelessly clueless. also, what kind of interest do you think you have in a culture when you don't care to learn the language? if you love japanese culture you don't just read manga and play jrpgs.

my sister loves the japanese culture and besides learning to draw anime she took kendo sword fighting classes, japanese history classes, learned to speak japanese (and speaks it around her house, even though she knows you can't understand her), learned to write kanji and katakana, and is saving up for a trip to visit. she has a real interest, not a fleeting ADD version of "ooh shiny culture, what's tha-- oooh shiny culture over here too"

Re:Sounds like a step backwards to me

[cyberfunkr]

Zinda, his face black, his eyes red. Kadir beneath Mo Moteh.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. Sokath, his eyes opened.

Brings back memories

[wvmarle]

The name brings back sweet memories to the first useful translation service on the web: babelfish.altavista.com, launched almost 15 years ago. The domain still works, but the fish has been gobbled up by Microsoft and it's redirecting to Microsoft's translation service.

Of course Digital also got their name from Douglas Adams' masterpiece.

Slashdot as popular mechanics

[EmperorOfCanada]

Slashdot likes to look at projects with potential but the only potential for this project is for a lead article in Popular Mechanics. If you try and use any device like this in real life you will just end up with a sushi chef having a crap in your salad seeing that you just offered him $500,000 to have a dump in the house salad. When you actually said "Fine, bread and house salad it is, and could I have a dumpling on the side?"

And when the cops come don't be surprised when they tazer you for what you called their mothers.

Re:Slashdot as popular mechanics

[Kahlandad]

Because for the last 20 years we've seen pretty amazing progress with speech recognition and interpretation technologies and there's no reason to think the next 20 years will be any different?

Re:Overblown

[Bill Currie]

I like subject is math.

Taken (with variations in the final word) from about 95% of the 2nd year junior high school English exams I marked.

In my opinion, any story using telepathy to overcome language barriers was written by either someone with no experience in just how different languages can be (eg, English vs Japanese), or someone with tongue very firmly planted in cheek (an onslaught of terrible bloody warfare). However, I do admit to a third possibility: the characters were lucky and their languages are similar enough that thinking processes readily translate, but different enough that speech doesn't.

Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

The Babelfish lived in your ear, not your brain.

Re:Overblown

[wvmarle]

Knowing how Google messes up things, a dictionary is not going to do it.

Take for example the English word "park". That can be "to park" where you are parking a car. Or it can be "a park", as in a green area to have a nice stroll. Same word, very different meaning.

Or the Dutch word "kussen", which in English can translate to pillow, cushion, pad, or kiss. The first three are synonyms, using the wrong one sounds odd but is usually intelligible. The fourth one is of course a very different meaning. Which one to use, depends on the context.

A while back I tried to translate the two-word combination "car park" into Chinese using Google Translate; I needed the characters but don't know how to type them. Result: car was translated correctly, park was the place where you go for a walk. They translated word by word using the wrong meaning for the second one. The proper translation is something like "stop-car-area" - when you try it now, you get the correct result.

Re:20 years ago...

[ShoulderOfOrion]

Any American who's been to Australia or the U.K. knows the Grand Canyon-esque gap in context and meaning between their slang and idiom-ridden English and our slang and idiom-ridden English.

All your base are belong to us

[aneroid]

The real question is...would it correctly translate to and from "All your base are belong to us"?
What is "correctly" in this case?

Re:not a step towards babel fish

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the article is talking about computers! It's not even a fish!!