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I'm also skeptical. This is a problem where it's fairly easy to get 80% there but nearly impossible to get 100% there. Most speech recognition apps have trouble

I'm also skeptical. This is a problem where it's fairly easy to get 80% there but nearly impossible to get 100% there. Most speech recognition apps have trouble with thick accents. From there, imagine stumbling speech or people who change their thoughts in the middle of a sentence. Then there's the lag between input and output - you often can't translate a phrase or sentence until you know the whole thing and then you're adding computer computation time onto it. I think this type of technology is inevitable, but I think we're still 50 years away from it being ubiquitous.

Swizec 10y ago
Nevermind thick accents. What about languages that have tens, even hundreds, of dialects? Slovenian, for instance, has only 2,000,000 speakers. Yet there are 56 officially classified dialects. [1] They all vary in important ways, sometimes to the point that a speaker from one dialect has trouble understanding a speaker from another. French is another language with hundreds of dialects. [2] My girlfriend is French, but when she goes to the Caribbean, she has trouble following conversation because their French is so much different than hers. English makes for a wonderful example too. Not only does it have hundreds of dialects, there are at least 4 different Englishes. UK, US, Aussie, African-American Vernacular. They're starting to show signs of splitting into separate languages. They already have differences in vocabulary and grammar. Then you can add slang on top of all this. Oh and to add to all this confusion: In most European countries people learn the standardized form of their native language almost as if it was a foreign language. I don't think we'll ever get to 100% accuracy with a tool like this. Even humans themselves can't do 100%. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_dialects#List_of_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_dialects#List_of_diale... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_French
- Kalium 10y ago
  In South Texas, I once encountered a man speaking English with a very strong Acadian accent. I had to listen to him speak for several minutes before I even realized that what he was speaking was in fact English. Accents and dialects are incredibly complex.
fuzzywalrus 10y ago
Exactly, considering the way language works with different language sentence conjugation, even simple things like adjectives in most romance languages have relative to the noun and article, a translation to a language like English in realtime would sound like someone with a head injury. A phrase like "Did you see you see the big red truck? It was driving very fast would be: ¿Viste el gran camión rojo? Conducía muy rápido. In real time this would be in English: See the big truck red? Driving very fast. That's just scratching the surface with the most basic communication. There's simply no way this product can work with any real accuracy.

Swizec 10y ago

Nevermind thick accents. What about languages that have tens, even hundreds, of dialects? Slovenian, for instance, has only 2,000,000 speakers. Yet there are 56 officially classified dialects. [1] They all vary in important ways, sometimes to the point that a speaker from one dialect has trouble understanding a speaker from another. French is another language with hundreds of dialects. [2] My girlfriend is French, but when she goes to the Caribbean, she has trouble following conversation because their French is so much different than hers. English makes for a wonderful example too. Not only does it have hundreds of dialects, there are at least 4 different Englishes. UK, US, Aussie, African-American Vernacular. They're starting to show signs of splitting into separate languages. They already have differences in vocabulary and grammar. Then you can add slang on top of all this. Oh and to add to all this confusion: In most European countries people learn the standardized form of their native language almost as if it was a foreign language. I don't think we'll ever get to 100% accuracy with a tool like this. Even humans themselves can't do 100%. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_dialects#List_of_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_dialects#List_of_diale... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_French

Kalium 10y ago
In South Texas, I once encountered a man speaking English with a very strong Acadian accent. I had to listen to him speak for several minutes before I even realized that what he was speaking was in fact English. Accents and dialects are incredibly complex.

fuzzywalrus 10y ago

Exactly, considering the way language works with different language sentence conjugation, even simple things like adjectives in most romance languages have relative to the noun and article, a translation to a language like English in realtime would sound like someone with a head injury. A phrase like "Did you see you see the big red truck? It was driving very fast would be: ¿Viste el gran camión rojo? Conducía muy rápido. In real time this would be in English: See the big truck red? Driving very fast. That's just scratching the surface with the most basic communication. There's simply no way this product can work with any real accuracy.