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Gadget Claims To Fit In Your Ear and Translate Foreign Languages In Real-Time (telegraph.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the just-like-the-movies dept.

An anonymous reader cites a report on the Telegraph about a tiny gadget that lets two people who speak a different language understand each other. The gadget dubbed Pilot translates English, French, Spanish and Italian. Pilot, which is yet to be launched, is priced at $129. From the report: It works by being connected to two different people, speaking two different languages, and translates what they are saying in your ear. Pilot is supposedly the first 'smart earpiece' capable of translating between two languages. Waverly Labs, who have developed the technology, said on their website: "This little wearable uses translation technology to allow two people to speak different languages but still clearly understand each other." They have not said how it works except for that it uses "translation technology" embedded in an app. We have reached out to them to find out more.

19 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. HHGG by fuzznutz · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is it a babelfish?

    1. Re:HHGG by EnOne · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the NON-existence of God. The argument goes like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.' `But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' `Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic. `Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing. - Douglas Adams "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy"

      --
      Calvin:Do you believe in the devil? Hobbes:I'm not sure man needs the help.
    2. Re:HHGG by Maxwell'sSilverLART · · Score: 3, Funny

      Dammit. Beaten to the draw by TFA.

      Don't worry; nobody will ever read it.

      --
      Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
  2. Uh, sure by wcrowe · · Score: 5, Funny

    "My hovercraft is full of eels..."

    --
    Proverbs 21:19
  3. Age Old Meme by darkain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1) Google Translate
    2) Bluetooth Headset
    3) PROFIT!

  4. An app? by Nidi62 · · Score: 2

    They have not said how it works except for that it uses "translation technology" embedded in an app.

    So....it's really just an earpiece that connects to a device running a translation app? What did they do, just take speech-to-text input, run it through Google Translate, then output through a text-to-speech app?

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  5. in what dialects?? by laurencetux · · Score: 2

    i would bet that it would explode trying to "translate" between say Southern (US) and Cockney (UK)
    even with both of them being "English" dialects.

    and does it work only 1 on 1 or will it translate between N persons??

    Linguist game you have 4 base languages how long can you talk with the response being a DIFFERENT dialect of those base languages?

    1. Re:in what dialects?? by SumDog · · Score: 2

      I'm a native speaker. I spent a year in Australia and got use to all the Aussies, before leaving for NZ. I was like, "This won't be as bad. I'm sure I'll understand them fine."

      The first day I was like, "OMG what the fuck is everyone saying I can'tunderstandanyofit!"

      I was fine after two weeks .. mostly. There are still some people I can't understand...mostly from Hamilton :-P

  6. My bullshit detector is going off by gweilo8888 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This one ticks all the boxes:

    * Unknown startup company
    * Huge claims
    * Big PR push
    * IndieGogo campaign

    Smart money says this either ships way late and barely functional, or never ships at all and the creator gets a nice new vacation home in France, Spain or Italy. Translating audio in real time is a fool's errand.

    Pay attention the next time you're dictating using, say, Google's voice recognition, or you're watching automatically-generated closed captions on an unscripted TV show. (Sports commentary is a nice example.) You will *frequently* see the transcription change after the fact, replacing one or more words with others that are totally different.

    If you claim to be transcribing and translating in anything approaching real time, that can't happen. Once you've said the wrong word, you've blown the meaning of the sentence. Correcting it in audio will take time, by which point you've missed (or are lagging further behind) the actual conversation. Or more likely (if this ever reaches market) your conversation is riddled with uncorrected errors and you have barely any understanding of what's actually being said.

    I doubt it will ever even reach this point, though. Chances are good no product ever ships, but the money is taken regardless.

    1. Re:My bullshit detector is going off by Verdatum · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I would love it if Slashdot had a rule to not bother with articles about companies who are still in the funding phase of their crowdfunding campaign unless the project provides detailed implementation specifics. Granted, /. isn't nearly as bad about this as many other tech reporting sites. But it's still a waste of everyone's time when it happens. And possibly worse, it grows that stupid-ass "AS FEATURED ON" list of logos that these sort of projects looove to use as false-credibility. They might as well call that section "The following websites have recently had slow-news-days and/or employ editors who don't bother to verify the validity of scientific or technical claims"

    2. Re:My bullshit detector is going off by BasilBrush · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Another for your list.

      * A photo of the "app" that is so low re you can't see if it's even a translation app.

    3. Re:My bullshit detector is going off by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 2

      Translating audio in real time is a fool's errand.
      Erm ... you are 20 years behind ...

      The biggest "known" project for natural language _voice_ translation was probably the Microsoft one, it got canceled.

      It got not canceled because it is to hard, but because Bill Gates was pissed off.

      Mr Gates visited the University of Karlsruhe, now KIT, in 1996 and gave a speech. The speech was translated and transcribed in realtime from english to german.

      When Bill Gates asked afterwards how this was done Prof. Alex Waibel (Prof at KIT and Carnegie Mellon University) explained that he and his teams are working on real time voice language recognition and translation since ~1987.

      Shortly afterwards Microsoft canceled their research/development program.

      Why we only have a few (and there are actually quite a few) real life applications of that technology, I don't know. (You find them in your App store for iOS and Android)

      Real time language to language translation is not that hard ... at least not as hard as it once was. Surprisingly against the laymen's assumptions it is particular easy e.g. to translate English to/from Japanese, or Thai for that matter.

      The language translation tools of KIT and CMU e.g. use Japanese as an interims language. The translation goes from source language to Japanese and from Japanese to target language. That is done, because the "sense" of a sentence can be expressed very clearly in Japanese. You can basically simply construct a language neutral (parse) tree of meaning by using Japanese as the intermediate language. My Thai is very bad, but as far as I can tell you could use Thai as well, or probably Korean.

      Why do I know all that? I worked for Prof. Waibel at the KIT (former University of Karlsruhe) as a unix guru from roughly 1990 till 1998.

      http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ahw/

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  7. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  8. Re:Wow! A Star Trek.... by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2

    Heh. Here's s'more Slashdot'esque rationale:

    "This device isn't patentable because it's (inconsistently) portrayed on Star Trek."

    --

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

  9. An example of conversation... by Pollux · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So, I took a basic dialog and ran it through Google Translator, converting it from English to German, then taking the German and converting it back to English. Here's what I got...

    Original Conversation:

    Person A: Look at this amazing gadget! It allows me to hear what you're saying in German in English! Here's a spare. Put it in your ear, and you can hear my English and translate it to German!

    Person B: Great! Now our different languages won't stop us from understanding each other!

    A: Just imagine, with this, we can break down language barriers that interfere with developing a mutual understanding of one another. This might be the answer to world peace!

    B: I'm not so sure about that. Good luck getting this thing to turn what Donald Trump has to say into something peaceful.

    And now, once translated and re-translated, we get...

    Person A: Check out this amazing gadget! It allows me to listen to what you say in German in English there! Here is a replacement. Put it in your ear, and you can listen to my English and German dictionary!

    Person B: Big! Now our different languages will not deter us to understand each other!

    A: Imagine, with this we can break language barriers that interfere with the development of a mutual understanding of each other. This could be the answer to world peace!

    B: I'm not so sure. Good luck always to turn this thing what Donald Trump has to say in a little quieter.

    -----

    Somehow, me thinks we still have a long ways to go. Though, I can say that this is a whole lot better than what Google was producing 15 years ago.

    1. Re:An example of conversation... by menkhaura · · Score: 2

      Well, that's quite a surprising outcome for your experiment. The general meaning of the conversation didn't get lost in translation, and while there was a little weirdness, a sane human being is perfectly capable of understanding that.

      Did you try other languages - more exotic ones, such as Mandarin or Vietnamese?

      --
      Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
      Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
    2. Re:An example of conversation... by menkhaura · · Score: 2

      Result from English - Chinese (traditional) - English (the original text is yours):

      Person A: Look at this amazing gadget! It let me hear what you're saying German English! There is a spare. Put it in your ear, you can hear me translate it into English and German!

      Person B: Great! Now, our different languages will not stop us from understanding each other!

      A: Imagine, with this, we can break with the development of mutual understanding and mutual interference language barriers. This may be the answer to world peace!

      B: I do not think so. Good luck and let this thing to have to say what Donald Trump has brought peace.

      ===
      Thai:

      Man A: See this amazing gadget! It helps me to hear what you're saying in German, in English! This is Parts Put it in your ear and you can hear in English and translated into German!

      Man B: Great! Now, a different language, we will not stop us from understanding each other!

      A: I think on this we can break down the language barriers that interfere with the development of a common understanding of one another. This might be the answer to world peace!

      B: I'm not sure about that. Good luck getting this thing to turn what Donald Trump has to say is quiet.

      --
      Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
      Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
    3. Re:An example of conversation... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 2

      The problem with google is: they made the grave mistake to use english as intermediate language.
      Everything coming from English or going to english translates ok.

      But German - French, or as in your example German - Thai, gives mostly bollocks.

      If I have to translate any text using translate.google.com I use english as the target language, choosing any other is so bad it is not even funny.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  10. Hungarian dictionnary! by DrYak · · Score: 2

    Very likely. What could possibly go wrong?

    My nipples explode in delight!

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]