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Baidu Shows Off Its Instant Pocket Translator (technologyreview.com)

Posted by msmash on from the moving-forward dept.

MIT Technology Review: Baidu showed off the speed of its pocket translator for the first time in the United States during an afternoon presentation at MIT Technology Review's EmTech Digital conference in San Francisco. The Chinese Internet giant has made significant strides improving machine language translation since 2015, using an advanced form of artificial intelligence known as deep learning, said Hua Wu, the company's chief scientist focused on natural-language processing. On stage, the Internet-connected device was able to almost instantly translate a short conversation between Wu and senior editor Will Knight. It easily rendered Knight's questions -- including "Where can I buy this device?" and "When will machines replace humans?" -- into Mandarin, and relayed Wu's responses in clear, if machine-inflected, English.

7 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. S.O.S. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2, Funny

    Will this be able to translate "help me get out of this pre-nup and I'll give up the butt" from Slovenian to English? Asking for a friend.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. Impressive by butzwonker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If it's not scripted, then this is very impressive. He should have tried "Could you tell me more about what happened on Tiananmen Square?", though.

    1. Re:Impressive by gweihir · · Score: 2

      That one is easy: Just give the Mandarin for "Stay in place, the police will arrive shortly."

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  3. Re:Sure by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 3, Funny

    I completely trust that this was fabricated in any way that China is an oasis for freedom.

    From which language was your comment translated?

  4. Google Translate by mapkinase · · Score: 2

    By a strange coincidence, I discovered that Google Translate app on Android has this feature. It sucks and I failed to make it work, but it's there, unmistakably for the subject purpose.

    --
    I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
  5. nail simple dictation first by Cederic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Right now voice recognition can't even accurately capture what I say, not a fucking hope it'll also be able to translate it to another language.

    Example - the above sentence captured using MS speech recognition:

    By now voice recognition come even actually capture what I say was that England can also be able to translate into another language

    ..and in Google Docs:

    Right Now voice recognition can't even accurately capture what I say and I f****** hope it also go to translate it to another language

    (yeah, Google add the *s)

    Google's getting close, although it struggles a lot more at times, but even that is going to sound garbled as fuck when translated - and that's with a quality microphone and a silent room, no background noise, no other people speaking, no traffic, no shitty phone microphone.

  6. Does it look like a fish? by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 2

    When they make it look like a small fish that you can stick in your ear, it'll sell like crazy.

    When they make one that can translate a teenager, I'll be truly impressed. I suppose they could analyze the speech patterns and use that to decide what they actually mean when they use a term like "literally". Still, listening to two teenage girls talk when no adult is in the conversation is like comparing math to accounting. They both use a lot of the same terms, but they have completely different meanings.

    But when they make one that translates what wives actually mean when they say something, they'll become the most valuable company in the world.