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Microsoft Demos Real-Time Translation Over Skype

Posted by samzenpus on from the speaking-the-same-language dept.

Z80xxc! (1111479) writes "Today at the first annual Code Conference, Microsoft demonstrated its new real-time translation in Skype publicly for the first time. Gurdeep Pall, Microsoft's VP of Skype and Lync, compares the technology to Star Trek's Universal Translator. During the demonstration, Pall converses in English with a coworker in Germany who is speaking German. 'Skype Translator results from decades of work by the industry, years of work by our researchers, and now is being developed jointly by the Skype and Microsoft Translator teams. The demo showed near real-time audio translation from English to German and vice versa, combining Skype voice and IM technologies with Microsoft Translator, and neural network-based speech recognition.'"

22 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. The Furture is Here! by cusco · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Back when I was about ten years old (1971) I asked my grandfather, "When you were my age did you imagine computers and men on the moon?"

    He replied, "Brian, when I was your age someone told me about radio, with people talking to each other across the ocean without wires. I didn't believe them."

    --
    "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
  2. Classic joke.. by sconeu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I want to know if it translates "Out of sight, out of mind" properly.

    Also, how the fuck did that fuckhead spammer BillTheEngineer get to post zillions of copies of his spam, all at 16:04, while us regular users have to wait 5 minutes?

    I guess it's true, like DRM, the wait period only hurts rules-abiding users.

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    1. Re:Classic joke.. by wbr1 · · Score: 2
      And he has a karma bonus. Must be spamming ads -for- Dice and their advertisers.

      What with the banner ad that comes up every time even though I have ads disabled. The bottom window shade ad box that I have to hide every time, and the beta fiasco, its a wonder more are not on soylent or pipedot.

      We will welcome you with open arms.

      --
      Silence is a state of mime.
    2. Re:Classic joke.. by master_kaos · · Score: 2, Funny

      [quote]Also, how the fuck did that fuckhead spammer BillTheEngineer get to post zillions of copies of his spam, all at 16:04, while us regular users have to wait 5 minutes?[/quote]
      He actually posted it in 20 different languages but Skype automatically translated them all to English for us...

    3. Re:Classic joke.. by CRCulver · · Score: 3, Funny

      You picked the wrong fellow to be pedantic with, my good man. In Classical Greek, myriados was both a numeral "10,000" and an adjective "countless". As a glance at the OED entry for the word will show, both senses passed into English when it borrowed the word.

    4. Re:Classic joke.. by OolimPhon · · Score: 2

      Dunno. Couldn't be bothered to count.

  3. English to German is relatively easy by the_humeister · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's impressive but relatively speaking, still easy. Now if they can do English to Japanese and vice versa, that would be taking it to 11.

    1. Re:English to German is relatively easy by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'd be happy with English to Texas English for when I have to deal with my family in the South.

      --
      "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
    2. Re:English to German is relatively easy by Oligonicella · · Score: 2

      Y'all, y'ern, y'uns,. Now try deep Ozarks where "Don't care to." and "Don't come onto me." don't at all mean what you'd normally think (amongst other unique phrases).

  4. Re:Watch the whole thing, because... by danknight48 · · Score: 3, Funny

    MyCleanPC

    Clearly doesnt work. Since your ./ account has been compromised and your now spamming like a bot.

  5. Translate? by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The NSA must really love this feature. They can view any encrypted conversation held via skype AND it gets translated automagically for them? Amazing!

    1. Re:Translate? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      Don't forget getting full text searches and conversation topic classification virtually for free.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  6. Real Time Text to Speech to NSA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is just a cover for why Microsoft needs to add Text-to-Speech to the Skype binary. The real purpose is to forward the discussions to the NSA.

    1. Re:Real Time Text to Speech to NSA by canadiannomad · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Unfortunately this really needs to get modded up... There are huge privacy concerns doing this... Certainly it takes advantage of the removal of Skype end-to-end encryption that we enjoyed so many years ago :(

      --
      Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
  7. Men are from Mars.... by HockeyPuck · · Score: 3, Funny

    Now if this device could tell me what my wife is saying....

    1. Re:Men are from Mars.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Reminds me of an old joke:

      A guy was walking along the beach, found a bottle, and picked it up. A magical genie popped out and said, "Thanks for letting me out. For your kindness I will grant you one wish." The guy said, "I've always wanted to go to Hawaii, but I can't because I'm afraid to fly and ships make me deathly sick. My wish is for you to build a highway from here to Hawaii." The genie replied, "I'm sorry, but I don't think I can do that. Just think of all the work involved. Think of the huge pilings we would need to hold up that highway and how deep they would have to be to reach the bottom of the ocean. And think of all the cement that would be needed. Plus, since it's such a long span, there would have to be gas stations and rest stops along the way. No, that's just too much to ask. Impossible. Think of another wish." The guy thought for a moment and said, "Well, there is one thing I've always wanted to know. I'd like to be able to understand women - what makes them laugh and cry, why are they so temperamental, why are they so difficult to get along with ...you know, what makes them tick?" The genie thought for a second, then asked, "Do you want that highway with two lanes or four?"

  8. Re:Real Time? by MrYingster · · Score: 2

    Obviously on the fly translation is only possible in exceptionally small cases. The point I was trying to make, however, is that if the speaker is speaks more than a single sentence, the software should be smart enough to begin translating the completed sentence while the speaker continues to talk, thus minimizing the lag. People don't always communicate back and forth with single sentences...

  9. English to German is relatively easy by donaldm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually English is derived from a West German dialect called Frisian, however over the centuries it has incorporated many other languages including early French and Danish. Still you are right it is relatively easy to translate English to German and vice-versa however it is also very easy to to stuff up the context which can easily be misinterpreted. A good example of this is to go to a web site that is in a different language and see how the page translator handles this.

    Japanese or even to Chinese to English translations can be quite strange to the English speaker and that is only translating the written language. As for almost real time translation of the spoken word I hope lazy diplomats don;t even use this technology (at least not yet) otherwise World War III is just around the corner :)

    --
    There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
  10. Skype needs to die by BrendaEM · · Score: 2

    It's sad that the open source alternatives are just not progressing, nor popular.

    So, skype is known NSA hacked program made by a company that patented video spying.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
  11. The german translation was really bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    German native here. I think this is just a marketing stunt. The german translation was so bad that it most of the time didnt make sense.
    Also the german voice tried to simplify the text as much as possible to give a more or less understandable english version.
    Real time translation has a looong way to go. At the moment it is as usable as google translate for chinese web-sites.

    1. Re:The german translation was really bad by Sique · · Score: 2

      Yes, this video sounds promising only for a english public, because the german speaker especially chosed sentences that are grammatically simple and fit similar structures in the english language. And she took care to speak especially clearly and made pauses between the words to improve the recognizability for the voice interpreter. The english speaker spoke much more naturally, and thus the translation into german was rather awful, and as a german native, you sometimes had to hear the english sentence to make sense of the automatic german translation.

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
  12. Bad translation quality by Knacklappen · · Score: 2

    I am disappointed by the bad quality of the translation to German, both in therms of grammar and words that have dual meaning. This is somewhat usable but not really something I would enjoy using. Also, the German lady spoke very slowly and overly accurate in pronunciation, probably because otherwise the software would fail. Move on, not much to see here...

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