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Google's Assistant Is Now Bilingual (theverge.com)
Google has announced a new feature for Google Assistant: it's bilingual now. The digital assistant will automatically recognize what language is being spoken to it and respond appropriately -- all without requiring you to change any settings. The Verge reports: You'll be able to set up Assistant to understand and respond to any two of the following languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. Google adds that it intends on "expanding to more languages in the coming months." The behind-the-scenes tech to make this happen is pretty interesting, as Google explains in an accompanying blog post. To make Assistant receptive to two languages simultaneously, the company created a new language-identification model (which it calls LangID) that runs as soon as the software detects speech.
Assistant actually runs LangID in parallel with two separate language processing models that try to transcribe what's been said in the user's two preset languages. Once LangID has identified the language, Assistant then cancels the incorrect transcription and routes all processing power to focus on the correct one. In order to speed up the process of identification, LangID doesn't just consider vocabulary; it also signals the frequency at which each language is used and the type of device it's used with.
Assistant actually runs LangID in parallel with two separate language processing models that try to transcribe what's been said in the user's two preset languages. Once LangID has identified the language, Assistant then cancels the incorrect transcription and routes all processing power to focus on the correct one. In order to speed up the process of identification, LangID doesn't just consider vocabulary; it also signals the frequency at which each language is used and the type of device it's used with.
Gets to detect all the languages in a house for the security services.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I see you read sentence two, where it sounds like it's a higher-order polyglot, but didn't make it to sentence four, where it's bilingual.
Whether that's for reasons of processing power, or language-detection accuracy rates dropping as the number of potential languages goes up, I don't know.
It can automatically decide whether to interpret input in either the selected main language or a selected secondary language. So two languages = bilingual. What did you think it meant?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Reading over the article it claims that this new update to Google Assistant can understand 6 languages.
I'd imagine it's the latter. The more languages you have to consider, the more words are going to appear to match more than one language. I'd expect Spanish and Italian to be challenging even *without* adding a third language.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Two at a time.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The other day, the wife and I were watching a foreign language TV program. No dubbing, just subtitles. I think it was Swedish.
Suddenly, Google Assistant on the wife's phone started. I have no idea what it heard that triggered it, but it wasn't English.
Surely Google should know we speak English exclusively? So what's the point?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Oblig. Futurama.
Have gnu, will travel.
It understands both Ones AND Zeros!
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
I'd expect Spanish and Italian to be challenging even *without* adding a third language.
Indeed. I have found that, as long as you are saying something simple, speaking Spanish in Italy works fairly well.
In the movie "The Tourist" the character played by Johnny Depp speaks Spanish to Italians thru the whole movie.
Wonder if will speak Klingon, or better yet Tolkien Elvish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
never used it. never will
Yes you will. Sooner or later, voice input will be the only option for many services.
You won't be able to withdraw money from an ATM without it recognizing your voice, nor will you be able to place an order with the robo-waitress at any restaurant.
And in the movie Mr. Bean's Holiday, Rowan Atkinson's character speaks Spanish to French people through the whole movie. :-D
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I really need Tamil for in-laws. They are in their 80s and it would be useful for them to be able to simply talk to turn on lights, etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
My missus cant wait until it's cunnilingual
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Shhh, we're American over here.
The other day, I said something very simple to Google Assistant, and was rewarded with a string of 80% Chinese characters and 20% English words which I had not said. The English was probably wrong because it lacked context (as the rest of the sentence was flagrantly misparsed).
Anyone know if I can opt out of this feature/bug? I assume they are viewing the world as their QA department, planning on the feature not working for a few years until they gather enough data to train the service to do a better job.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
This presumably helps with code-switching, which bilingual people tend to do all-the-freaking-time. They'll start a sentence in one language, forget how to say something in that language (or don't like how it sounds in that one), then switch to another, sometimes for only a few words before switching back.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
It's a cute idea, with an obvious implementation (running both language modules simultaneously). Presumably, part of the input into the language ID is also seeing which language module is successfully making sense of the input.
However... We have a bilingual household (English/German), and part of the reality is also that the languages get mixed. There is always some word in the "other" language that is handy, or maybe you just can't find the word you're looking for. If you're free to talk to your devices in either language, then you will unvermeidlich talk to them in beide Sprachen (inevitably talk to them in both languages). And that will be a lot more challenging...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I speak very standard (Cambridge) English and none of the IVR systems I encounter ever understands me. However, everywhere I have ever worked (more than 30 different companies), people from all different backgrounds reported that I was the easiest to understand of all the people they had ever met.
I, on the other hand, cannot understand the dialogue in a lot of American movies, to the extent that I rarely watch any (not even pirate ones).
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
But it refuses to work in more than 2 languages?
How many do you speak?
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
Bilingual.
And what do you call someone who speaks only one language?
American!
bickerdyke
Hate to say so, but speaking was jumping the shark for Mr. Bean.
bickerdyke
Shame it doesn't support Chinese yet too. For us the ideal would be English, Japanese and Chinese support so we can both use it in our native and common languages.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Useless without Esperanto.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Und wos is mid Weanerisch? Kinnts es deppn ned a so a Waidsprach ren, es Zniachtaln!
If they ahve Dollars, they probably speak American. That is not English by a very long mile.
Americans are a lot closer to standard English than some of the rural British accents. Even a working-class Glasgow or Newcastle accent is a lot tougher than 90% of Americans to understand for me.
Having lived in both the UK and US with an oriental parent who spoke broken English, I have no problem understanding anyone speaking English anywhere in the world, except lower-class black Americans.
That'd be a variant of a Southern accent? If you go to the rural South, you'll hear white folk talkin' same way.
But I do remember in Chicago really struggling, embarrassed, to understand the working-class black accents, while they understood my foreign accent perfectly.
Just like in rural Ireland.
And what do you call someone who speaks only one language?
American!
Or Australian. At least the Americans find Spanish a bit useful.
Oui.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I've heard quite a few linguists argue that "Ebonics" is a separate language from (American) English, with often a different grammar.
None of the ones I know seem to have any kind of racial agenda, just observing an interesting linguistic phenomenon of a new language being created.
When I'm in the US I also notice a large difference between the languages of people with different ethnical backgrounds, which seems to mean that the society is much more segregated than in for example my own country.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor