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Wearable Translator to Debut at Comdex
quiller writes "Via is supposed to have a wearable PC that will take your voice, translate to seven different languages, and output the translated words through a speaker. Looks like something I want to look at while I'm there. " It will allegedly be showing at Lernout & Hauspie's booth, as it uses their translaton engine. The current specs have Mandarin Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and
Spanish in the box. I think I'd need one - I'd feel so Arthur Dent.
version 2 can translate to moron.
My bets are that it looks like the star trek universal translator. Yours?
The Wearable PC is a line of products allowing the user to select processor, storage, and display depending on the application, and starts at $2,000 for quantity purchases.
Storage and display choices. Is that really necessary? A simple LCD and a couple of RAM cards should be enough. But, what I want to know: is this thing real-time, or is there some (significant) delay in translation time?
Universal Translator, meet the 20th Century.
Was it star trek or another show that had a "wearable transelator"?
Does anyone know if there is a site that keeps track of sci-fi items that have become reality?
--
Time is on my side
Imagine life actually being like a bad japanese movie with voiceovers!
No one's voice syncing with their mouths would be very disconcerting. Too bad it doesn't do like the trek Universal Translator and change the apperance of their mouths to match.
Does anyone know what kind of accuracy and speed these things(or the engine behind the translation) are going to have?
How extensive are the dictionaries?
I haven't seen many impressive systems to translate text, let alone voice, so I am a little skeptical...
This is so cool. Imagine being able to mangle everything said to you by any foreigner, live and direct. No hunting through the dictionary, no browsing a web site just straightforward ...
"I was pissing by the door and I heard a strange nuzze".
( Alo Alo for the humor impaird )
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Man walking down a street of Beijing: "I like the flawless beauty of the streets!"
Translator: The virginity of these pretty [women] turns me on in the road!"
"The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays."
"Why is my monitor blue?" into Mandarin Chinese...
(For those who don't know or forgot, follow this Slashdot link.
-m
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
- -Steve Martin, commenting on speaking French badly
If I used one of these, I'd want to know enough of the destination language to "sanity check" its output.The things that people have said..
Ummm, anyone bite the wax tadpole lately?
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
However, if I could afford one of these, I suppose it would be better and faster than getting a pocket translator, typing in a phrase, and trying to pronounce the output.
--== [N] ==--
"In this phrasebook, you have the Bulgarian expression 'Which way to the train station' translated as 'Please fondle my buttocks'...."
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
MarketingSpeak into plain English. It is Comdex after all.
On second thought, maybe you just turn it off the get the translation.
- Listen to a human
- Output to another language.
- Have another device listen to that output,
- Output back to the original language.
(In other words, box -i english -o mandarin < english.au | box -i mandarin -o english > english2.au) Only then will I be convinced that this isn't crap-joev
...you're not going to get the truly inter-planetary hitch-hikers wearing this thing. Fine it may do the job, but does it have the style, the finesse, of sticking a fish in your ear?
I think not!!!
Knowing the difficulties of language translation and the current level of machine translation, there are just to many problems to make this feasable. The proof of concept in this device's creation is a strong example of the power of modern computing, but I feal that long term evaluation will show its considerable weakness. Cool gadget, but not practical. Spend your $2000 on a good translator.
Machine translation isn't there yet. Babelfish at least starts with what you want in the first language. Imagine feeding the output from a 95% accurate speech recognition system though babelfish. You'd come out with gibberish.
I'd prefer a system that assists me with speaking a second language. Something where I can be talking to someone, forget a word, hit a button on the Language eCoach(tm), say "you're welcome, in japanese" and hear "dou itashimashite" in a earphone. Or, someone says something I don't understand, so I repeat it to the translator and it gives me the english.
With such a device, it would be possible to have a conversation in a foreign language after about 80 hours of instruction, because you don't have to memorize heavy vocabulary. It would also make the learning itself easier, because you don't have to waste time looking stuff up in the dictionary.
If the translation was imperfect, it wouldn't matter so much. Maybe it'd give me different options, like if I say "bank, in german", it would say "with money, Bank, with river, Strand", and give the user the option of saying whatever is right. Babelfish translates "I went down to the bank" as "Ich ging unten zur Bank", which may or may not be what I meant.
I know my spanish is not that good, but you must the the idea.
Injured geek wins against Mattel!
Their website can be found here.
Anything that translates to and from so many languages must have some meta-language that it works with internally. So what is that Meta-language, and can we figure out how to turn it into something that could be used as the universal language? Perhaps all communications should be translated into that on public channels.
I vote for esperanto. Seems like the "Metric System" kind of thing to do.
Let us hoping to be and that this one is can work much better at translation than for babelfish.altavista.com. Aha, I wager you are looking to next, and yet, for success!!!!- ---------------------
------------------------------------
Do you waaaaant to come back to my place *bouncy*bouncy*?
Notice Japanese is suspiciously absent from the list of supported languages, but Mandarin Chinese is first. A Taiwanese product, no doubt, and perhaps if a certain neighbour to our east (north) might have raped our land 50 years ago we might be neglecting their language in our technology too. Still, let's not forget what happened to the collaborators who allowed the Japanese possession of Manchuria. . .
Something to think about.
Time Lord, Dark Horse: The Techno Mage of Gallifrey
I like the idea of esperanto in a translater but why not use the language for its intended meaning. I'm trying to say, rather than one person having a
English -to- Esperanto -to- french
and the other person speak french,
have one use a
English -to- Esperanto (or visa-vis)
and the other a
French -to- Esperanto (or visa-vis).
that would seem to simplify things. or am i just out of my knowladge league?
input> Can you tell me what platform the 5:30
train leaves from?
output> I KISS YOU!!! I like sex!
Check out http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wearable/translator.html. as well as http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wearable/tiap.html
As a graduate of the arduous Russian Basic Course at the Defense Language Institute and one of the best American-born Russian speakers, I think that the whole of electronic translation is shallow and no substitute for going out and learning a language.
When I've translated or interpreted (translation=written documents, interpreting=spoken in real-time), most of the time both of the parties have only a 75% clue as to what actually happened. They miss out on the connotation of the words, the hidden meanings that are derived from culture. In these cases, only the translator knows 100% of the transaction.
For example, "Perestrojka" is the restructuring of the Soviet government during the Gorbachev era, but it comes from the roots "pere" or repeating action, again, and "strojit" or building, erecting, organizing. It's not just a political process, it's also what happens after an earthquake, and what I would call the Post-Civil-War Reconstruction if I had to talk about it in Russian. So, to an American, it is the policy of restructuring the government, but to me, it means a broad revolution of culture, ideas, and politics.
Point being, that would be lost in an electronic translator. There are many concepts that don't translate no matter how hard you crunch code. You have to feel them.
As Americans, we have this belief that everybody should learn English to talk to us. There's a joke in Linguist circles, "what do you call a person who can speak two languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person that can speak three languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person that can speak one language? American."
Europeans have great language programs for school children, and it is no big deal for someone to learn Italian just because they are going on a vacation to Italy.
If you want to go to a different country and buy souvenirs, get an electronic translator. If you want to bridge cultures, learn a language.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
I want 2 of 'em and start 'em off translating back & forth in a feedback loop, as in the two famous examples:
input: "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" -> russian -> back to english -> "the vodka is good but the meat is rotton"
input: "out of sight, out of mind" -> russian -> back to english -> "blind idiot"
etc.
Bang the head that doesn't bang!
I'm not sure how much background you have on this subject, but I lived in Taiwan for two years and have an Asian Studies Minor, so I know a little bit about Taiwan vs Japan. Most old Taiwanese that actually were alive when Japan ruled Taiwan like the Japanese. Japan did a lot to help Taiwan because they expected it be always be a part of the Japanese Empire. Now Korea (and Manchuria) on the other hand is a different matter entirely. Japan totally raped Korea of timber and any other natural resource they could because they knew they couldn't keep Korea forever.
Okay, back on topic: I really want to check this thing out at Comdex and see how good it's Chinese translation is!!
An excellent, very interesting book on the subject of translation (not how-to, but about the kinds of issues that come up and some very impressive examples of translating lots of things considered to be untranslatable) is "Le Ton Beau de Marot", by Douglas R. Hofstadter, (author of Godel, Escher, Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid, another excellent book.)
This book talks some about machine translation, but mostly about translation in general. Highly recommended to anybody interested in languages & translation.
Bang the head that doesn't bang!
Machines such as this will only serve a point when they can translate the one and only true dialect that actually has an impact on this world.... ebonics.
:) (Unless it does ebonics+binary)
Until then, I cannot envision myself purchasing one
I'd like to take it, reverse the mic. and the speaker, and add a borkification engine. Voila! Everyone sounds like the sweedish chef.
Company meetings would suddenly be a source of amusement.
If you set up the speakers of one such device to the mic of a second, and visa versa, and set up the software so the translation path looks such:
Device 1: English->LanguageX
Device 2: LanguageX->English
How many times through the feedback loop do you think it would take for the output to become totally incomprehensible in either langauge???
Anyone going to Comdex? Try it!!!
Are you running Windows NT? If so, this is not good, not good at all :0)
Japanese and Korean grammar are significantly different from Western languages and Chinese, and indeed from most every other language, since they're linguistic isolates. That means it's harder to write a translator for these languages. Don't expect a Basque module anytime soon either.
And, if you read the actual story, you'll notice it's actually a Minnesotan product.
Thanks, that was a funny thread. I think there should be a special hall of fame for funny threads. My vote goes to a decent first post. Actually a lot of the posts in that article are pretty funny.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
I met some of their marketing folks at a recent tech show in Maine (yeah, in Maine!). I talked with them for 20 minutes about some things and I got a sweatshirt, but I also talked to them about many other things. They have a really cool tape device - well digital recorder - which plugs in with their Voice Recognition software. It's very cool.
Their Voice recognition is pretty decent, but I haven't played around with it enough to figure out how to add workds. I was up and runniing with the Voice Rec. software in about 20 minutes. 7 minutes install, 13 minutes Recognition testing... or whatever they call it 'signing in' I think.
I've used the program while on irc some, and while dictating some documents. It's all windows based, but they have made some serious strides. I like it. They're promising Mac versions of things soon, but had no plans for linux, (at the time I talked to them).
Some other things we talked about are covered in a non-disclosure, so I can't mention those... sorry.
They're cool people... and their marketing drones are freindly, relatively technically savvy people.
yacko
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
excellent boot? somebody needs to check their translator... ;)
Might I suggest this translation resource? Site O' Joel is a good place to translate to/from just about any language (no Somoli or Malay just yet), but it is geared toward English speakers. Oh, and its just a links page to lots of online resources, etc., but its a good starting place. Don't forget to check out the world's first ever English to Canadian translator while you're there.
In case it matters, I am an American, I speak very poor Spanish dispite having a wife who is a native Spanish speaker. I spent 2 years at an international school, the Armand Hammer United World College, and have spent about 3 months of my life outside the US on various occasions. I use "Americans" in this comment to refer to United Statesians alone, and not to other inhabitants of the Americas.
Clearly geography is part of the answer, European countries are much smaller and more integrated with their neighbors than the US. Near the US/Mexico border, there are a large number of English speaking people that speak at least enough Spanish to conduct a simple consumer transaction. As you note, the only good way of learning a language is by being immersed in the language and culture.
Dominance is another part of the answer. In a world that is dominated by English speaking powers, particularily in economics and entertainment, most people an English speaker interacts with will have a working command of English. I suspect that when French (the original lingua franca) was dominant in diplomatic circles, that there was a similar lassitude on the part of French speakers.
However, neither of these factors explain the aggressiveness with which Americans are monolingual. In California, where there is a large population of native Spanish speakers, bilinugal education has been banned in public schools. Elsewhere, language education for childern is half-hearted at best, if it exists at all. As one of my Spanish professors told me, the stated purpose of most elementary foreign language education in the US is to assist in the teaching of English grammar and vocabulary, not to teach for fluency.
I think that the reason for the resistance to language education comes down to xenophobia and racism. Americans fear cultural encroachment, particularily by an increasingly large hispanic population. (This is of course ironic considering the cultural encroachment on the rest of the world by American culture, but Americans, as a rule, are poor connoisseurs of irony). Language is a particularly feared element of this cultural encroachment since language is so central to culture, and conversely a shared language connotes a certain degree of shared culture. There is of course a large measure of racism encapsulated in this fear. If Americans did not feel that immigrants were inferior, we would welcome their cultural and linguistic contributions.
As with any prejudice, there are legitimate fears as well as ignorant ones. Since preserving language is essential for preserving culture, a multi-lingual society is a more multi-cultural one, and multi-cultural societies, notwithstanding their benefits, are more suceptible to internal conflict.
In the midst of all this racism, xenophobia, and legitimate desire for a unifying national identity, the majority opinion is that immigrants should assimilate and learn English. This opinion is in fact shared by many if not most immigrants. Unfortunately, in the push to teach everybody English we come to the idea that not only should all immigrants learn English, but that the whole world should learn English.
So what's the solution? I wish I knew. If you come up with a solution that doesn't involve a gun I'll vote for you.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
But it was /Hungarian/, not Bulgarian.
"I wheel not by zis tobacconist, it is scratched!"
"Please föööndle my buttocks."
"Ah, yes. Two blocks down, and left at the light."
And so on...
No! Don't click me!
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
I am keenly interested in this development, but not for its ability to translate languages. I was born deaf, and since I deal with mostly hearing people in my professional life, I have always wished I could have a little device that would print out what people are saying to me. Having the words projected on my glasses would make me live in a subtitled world, just like a foreign movie. Most of my co-workers know enough sign language from my insistence that they learn at least a few words and I can read lips with proficiency, so life is good in my happy world. Unfortuately, it's a big company and I must deal with many people in my day to day activities on the job. Current technology that requires software to be trained isn't practical for speech to text applications. The glasses idea has been tried by others. One interesting project I saw was a tiny LED that sat in the corner of your glasses, kind of like the permanent logo on TV programs. The LED didn't print out words, but merely glyphs for each phoneme it interpreted. I am not sure how it fared in the lab because the last I heard of it was about ten years ago. I did once participate in an experiment at the local University in which a very nice young lady strapped a sleeve to my forearm, and on the sleeve was a matrix of 64 motors which would buzz against my skin. The idea was that by recognizing patterns I would be able to recognize translated speech. It worked just about as well as you would expect but it did seem to improve my golf swing. At any rate, a wearable computer capable of translating spoken words into text without any training in any given situation would be the payoff for people such as myself looking to get ahead in their careers in an imperfect, non-sign language speaking world. I am looking forward to learning about this product and I hope it can be modified with ease to applicaitons such as mine. -Derrick
Or be prepared for a quizzical expression.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
I always wish I had some sort of universal translator whenever I go there(for those of you outside of "the valley," going to this place is sort of a like a trip to the UN) wil deny
Its really a pendant attached to a 100 lbs cage on wheels containing a 4-foot linguist on loan from a failing European power.
"The worst part is the number of Stephen Hawking prank calls will rise exponentialy."
Not quite. Pronounce the 'gh' as in 'enough', 'o' as in 'women', 'ti' as in 'nation'.
Incidentally, one of the first things I tried when I got S.A.M. (Software-Automated Mouth) for ye old Commodore 64 was 'ghoti', which it pronounced 'gosh'.
Also incidentally, I think one of the words listed is misspelled. 'floccinaucinihilipilification', the act of judging a bit of information to be utterly worthless, according to the (dis)honorable Cecil Adams in _More of the Straight Dope_.
I imagine it does, which could be a problem. Imagine walking into a store in Tokyo, asking for "a copy of Linux, please", and having it say in Japanese, "a copy of Win2000 please."
Star Trek here we come......but when will it be the size of a communicator. I am there......
does it fit in your ear?
Have that gotten rid of that -horrible- computer synth voice we've had since the days of War Games??? I can see it now, a Russian diplomat walks up to an American diplomat and asks the question that ends the world.
"Would you like to play a game?"
=I am Jack's general protection fault=
This is going to be an incredible help to so many people. I wonder how many people will lose their jobs.
I have a big bag full of two cents and I'm coming your way.
You need to know both languages to judge machine translation. So far I've not been impressed, most of the time machine translation is more like instant humor generation. The only thing I tried that was close to ok was a simple travel description, with a few very odd words sprinkled in (this was babelfish, german to english). I never would use it to translate into a language I don't know. Some instant humor for the Germans: Sie müssen beide Sprachen kennen, um maschinelle Übersetzung zu beurteilen. Bis jetzt bin ich nicht, die meisten der Zeitmaschinellen Übersetzung bin mehr wie sofortiges Stimmungerzeugung beeindruckt worden. Die einzige Sache, die ich versuchte, der nah an O.K. war eine einfache Spielraumbeschreibung war, wenn einige sehr ungerade Wörter innen besprüht sind (dieses war das babelfish, Deutsch-Englisches). Ich nie würde sie verwenden, um in eine Sprache zu übersetzen, die ich nicht kenne.
english->spanish->english "the alcohol is arranged but the meat is weak"
Just like pocket translators, every first year foreign language student is going to want one so he can learn how to say all the naughty words. At least now the teacher won't have to tell them that they are pronouncing their swear words wrong.
Even if travellers use them, I doubt that they will be taken seriously. Can you imagine someone walking up to you with a little box, fumbling to make sure it hears him while he talks into it, then thrusting it at you for it to speak something that is more than likely SOMEWHAT recognizable as English (-or insert another language of preference here)? I would just laugh.
--
Tell you what: we come back and everyone's slaughtered...I owe you a coke.
What I don't understand is: why is it so difficult to learn another language? I mean, isn't there a stat like only 10% of a language is used 90% of the time? And in all indo-european languages, like 9 out of that 10 percent is all the same. So why can't I learn French in 1 day? I'm trying to cram as many languages into my brain as I can (working on French, Hungarian, and Latvian, wish me luck), and doing it without any formal instruction.
I came to France 6 months ago savoir _aucune_ de francais, and now I can almost speak it. I don't know if that's slow or fast, but why did it take me 6 months to learn the few hundred main words of this language?
If there are any linguist /. readers, please email me. This subject facinates me and I have no education on it.
-davek
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
When are they going to do that?
:).
Or english to perl/python
Check out the past story about the neural network that recognizes speech better than humans.
And on a similar subject, I think it'd be interesting to see neural networks applied to translation - they could possibly be trained to recognize idioms, produce more meaningful output, etc.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Doh!
Anyway, a large part of the answer is that you need to do more than just "learn" a few hundred words. You could probably memorize them in a week of concentrated study (or less). But that's not enough. You need to develop conditioned reflexes of associating the meaning with the sound (and vice versa) nearly instantly and unconsciously.
Developing conditioned reflexes takes a long time. Compare this with learning a martial art, or gymnastics, or learning dozens of complicated dance routines -- all of these examples could easily take 6 months or even years.
So we shouldn't be surprised at the length of time that it takes to develop really good conditioned reflexes in language, either.
(Pity no one will ever see this comment, since I'm posting 6 days after the discussion!)
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary