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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.'"

12 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 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.

  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
  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!

  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....

  8. 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.
  9. 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.