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In practice, it's doubtful that this feature of the product will be that useful. Google Translate still fails at very basic grammatical constructs, despite all

by GuiA 9y ago

In practice, it's doubtful that this feature of the product will be that useful. Google Translate still fails at very basic grammatical constructs, despite all the deep learning machinery they recently upgraded to (one of my favorite examples being the extremely simplistic "my cousin and her wife", which a 5 year old would properly parse, and yet gets erroneously translated to e.g. "mon cousin et sa femme" in French, when it should be "ma cousine et sa femme" (inferred from the her)). For corpuses in languages that are closely related (e.g. Swedish and English which they showed on stage), you generally get fairly usable results, which are acceptable for getting the general meaning of a news article but would get frustrating quickly for a real life conversation. For languages that are not closely related, the tech is just plain unusable. People who need to work with multiple languages professionally will never use this - too many nuances would be lost, and too many mistakes would be made. The UN is not getting rid of its army of translators any time soon. On the other end of the spectrum, people who punctually need to use a foreign language (e.g. because they are visiting a country for a few weeks) don't have that much of a pain point. When my French parents visit foreign countries, they communicate with the locals in broken English and by pointing and gesturing. Sure, there might be a bit of friction there, but there's nothing that this approach doesn't get them that this product would. Not to mention that speaking to someone while wearing earbuds looks plain rude, and that you can only really have a 2 way conversation if they also are wearing these earbuds, which 99.9% of the world won't. It certainly makes for a very cool demo, but as a product it doesn't really have much of a place.

s17n 9y ago
The two way functionality works with only one pair of buds - the other user holds the phone
jamesrcole 9y ago
I use Facebook's translation of comments a fair bit and it enables me to usually get at least the gist of what's being said - and sometimes a clear view of it. If that level of accuracy could be applied to in-person audio it could be a lot more useful than not having it.
- GuiA 9y ago
  Sure. Translating written text and translating live conversations are two very different things though.
  - jamesrcole 9y ago
    But your argument, which my comment concerns, was based on text translation: "Google Translate still fails at very basic grammatical constructs..."
    - GuiA 9y ago
      The point is that an imperfect translation engine can be adequate for making sense of written text in an asynchronous way (if one sentence is confusing your eyes can jump back to the previous one to try to guess the connection, etc.), but be near-unusable for on the fly translation of a real world conversation. Context matters a lot.
      - jamesrcole 9y ago
        Then your argument is actually that they won't be able to do real time audio translation to a similar level of accuracy to Google Translate. The comment I replied to did not make that argument.
        GuiA 9y ago
        No, there is a misunderstanding. The point I am making that you are referring to is that while you may be able to understand a piece of text in a foreign language translated visually by Google Translate (because your eyes can jump forward/backwards in the text, reread a confusing sentence, you can pause for a second and try to make sense of it, etc.), if the exact same text were translated in audio form, as part of a live, 1-1 conversation, you wouldn't be able to make sense of a lot of it because you can't do all the things I just listed which help deal with imperfect translations. It's the same thing as if I read you a very complicated scientific paper you're not familiar with out loud, versus you reading it yourself. You will understand more in the latter situation. (imagine if we had this back and forth in 2 different languages using Google earbuds, instead of over a textual medium :-)
macintux 9y ago
As someone interested in helping with disaster scenarios, the ability to handle rudimentary Spanish is quite interesting.
- GuiA 9y ago
  If you're interested in helping with disaster scenarios in Spanish speaking countries, you would most likely be better served by a few months of duolingo (or other language learning course/app). It'd be cheaper, more useful for you in general (e.g. you would also be able to make sense of written text, which this product alone does not cover), and you wouldn't be reliant on a charged phone + charged earbuds + cellular connection, which might be a hard trio of requirements to fulfill in disaster scenarios. (These considerations don't address the fact that there are most likely many other people who do speak Spanish and are willing to volunteer, and assistance organizations would probably prefer those to someone with Google's latest gadget)
  - dlubarov 9y ago
    > you would also be able to make sense of written text, which this product alone does not cover Google Translate does have a feature where you can take a photo, OCR the text and translate it - https://support.google.com/translate/answer/6142483 https://support.google.com/translate/answer/6142483
    - GuiA 9y ago
      "this product" = earbuds The translation overlay on camera feed feature of Google Translate is great, and it does not suffer from most of the problems I outlined in my original post. It is for a very different kind of use case though (it's more about solving the problem of "what does this menu/street sign say?", rather than trying to offer full conversation live translation)
  - macintux 9y ago
    I don't have to leave the US to find disaster situations where knowing Spanish would be useful. Yes, clearly actually knowing the language would be better.
euyyn 9y ago
> there might be a bit of friction there, but there's nothing that this approach doesn't get them that this product would There absolutely is. I'm fluent in English, and in a visit to Japan a couple months ago I found myself in a restaurant with a waiter that didn't speak English, and an issue with my credit card that she couldn't explain to me. After several attempts at communicating in other ways, I just opened Google Translate on the phone and we were able to have a spoken conversation much like the one you saw in the presentation.
- GuiA 9y ago
  Genuinely curious then: are you interested by this product? What would it let you do that your phone doesn't let you do? Do you feel like the interaction would have been better if mediated by audio only earbuds instead of a phone with a display?
  - kibwen 9y ago
    While on vacation in New Orleans I became friends with two Brazilians staying at my hostel. Only one of them is confident in their English, the other speaks it haltingly, and I speak no Portuguese. They've invited me to come spend time with them next year, which is little time for me to become a fluent speaker. Something like this looks like it might allow me a much greater chance of understanding and being understood by all of their friends.
  - euyyn 9y ago
    The demo shown included using both the earbuds and the phone, so the display would still be there.
- Grue3 9y ago
  Except Google's Japanese to English translation is horrifically inaccurate and likely to mislead you by orders of magnitude [1] [1] https://translate.google.com/#ja/en/11%E4%B8%87500%E5%86%86 https://translate.google.com/#ja/en/11%E4%B8%87500%E5%86%86
  - 9y ago

by GuiA 9y ago

s17n 9y ago

The two way functionality works with only one pair of buds - the other user holds the phone

jamesrcole 9y ago

I use Facebook's translation of comments a fair bit and it enables me to usually get at least the gist of what's being said - and sometimes a clear view of it. If that level of accuracy could be applied to in-person audio it could be a lot more useful than not having it.

GuiA 9y ago
Sure. Translating written text and translating live conversations are two very different things though.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  But your argument, which my comment concerns, was based on text translation: "Google Translate still fails at very basic grammatical constructs..."
  - GuiA 9y ago
    The point is that an imperfect translation engine can be adequate for making sense of written text in an asynchronous way (if one sentence is confusing your eyes can jump back to the previous one to try to guess the connection, etc.), but be near-unusable for on the fly translation of a real world conversation. Context matters a lot.
    - jamesrcole 9y ago
      Then your argument is actually that they won't be able to do real time audio translation to a similar level of accuracy to Google Translate. The comment I replied to did not make that argument.
      - GuiA 9y ago
        No, there is a misunderstanding. The point I am making that you are referring to is that while you may be able to understand a piece of text in a foreign language translated visually by Google Translate (because your eyes can jump forward/backwards in the text, reread a confusing sentence, you can pause for a second and try to make sense of it, etc.), if the exact same text were translated in audio form, as part of a live, 1-1 conversation, you wouldn't be able to make sense of a lot of it because you can't do all the things I just listed which help deal with imperfect translations. It's the same thing as if I read you a very complicated scientific paper you're not familiar with out loud, versus you reading it yourself. You will understand more in the latter situation. (imagine if we had this back and forth in 2 different languages using Google earbuds, instead of over a textual medium :-)

macintux 9y ago

As someone interested in helping with disaster scenarios, the ability to handle rudimentary Spanish is quite interesting.

GuiA 9y ago
If you're interested in helping with disaster scenarios in Spanish speaking countries, you would most likely be better served by a few months of duolingo (or other language learning course/app). It'd be cheaper, more useful for you in general (e.g. you would also be able to make sense of written text, which this product alone does not cover), and you wouldn't be reliant on a charged phone + charged earbuds + cellular connection, which might be a hard trio of requirements to fulfill in disaster scenarios. (These considerations don't address the fact that there are most likely many other people who do speak Spanish and are willing to volunteer, and assistance organizations would probably prefer those to someone with Google's latest gadget)
- dlubarov 9y ago
  > you would also be able to make sense of written text, which this product alone does not cover Google Translate does have a feature where you can take a photo, OCR the text and translate it - https://support.google.com/translate/answer/6142483 https://support.google.com/translate/answer/6142483
  - GuiA 9y ago
    "this product" = earbuds The translation overlay on camera feed feature of Google Translate is great, and it does not suffer from most of the problems I outlined in my original post. It is for a very different kind of use case though (it's more about solving the problem of "what does this menu/street sign say?", rather than trying to offer full conversation live translation)
- macintux 9y ago
  I don't have to leave the US to find disaster situations where knowing Spanish would be useful. Yes, clearly actually knowing the language would be better.

euyyn 9y ago

> there might be a bit of friction there, but there's nothing that this approach doesn't get them that this product would There absolutely is. I'm fluent in English, and in a visit to Japan a couple months ago I found myself in a restaurant with a waiter that didn't speak English, and an issue with my credit card that she couldn't explain to me. After several attempts at communicating in other ways, I just opened Google Translate on the phone and we were able to have a spoken conversation much like the one you saw in the presentation.

GuiA 9y ago
Genuinely curious then: are you interested by this product? What would it let you do that your phone doesn't let you do? Do you feel like the interaction would have been better if mediated by audio only earbuds instead of a phone with a display?
- kibwen 9y ago
  While on vacation in New Orleans I became friends with two Brazilians staying at my hostel. Only one of them is confident in their English, the other speaks it haltingly, and I speak no Portuguese. They've invited me to come spend time with them next year, which is little time for me to become a fluent speaker. Something like this looks like it might allow me a much greater chance of understanding and being understood by all of their friends.
- euyyn 9y ago
  The demo shown included using both the earbuds and the phone, so the display would still be there.
Grue3 9y ago
Except Google's Japanese to English translation is horrifically inaccurate and likely to mislead you by orders of magnitude [1] [1] https://translate.google.com/#ja/en/11%E4%B8%87500%E5%86%86 https://translate.google.com/#ja/en/11%E4%B8%87500%E5%86%86
- 9y ago