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Google Turns Your Android Phone Into An On-The-Fly Conversation Interpreter
- JunkDNA 16y ago"Google is quick to note that this is very much an alpha feature. In other words, expect a lot of hiccups. They note that background noise, thick accents, and quick speech can all trip up the app." Wow, so it's not practically useful very frequently?
- minalecs 16y agodude.. google is getting closer to a real time universal speech translator and you find a way to be unimpressed. What does impress you ?
- buro9 16y agoHate to repost it but: Everythings Amazing & Nobodys Happy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk
- kindly 16y agoMy guess would be a babel fish. It only picks up on subconscious frequencies, so outside noise will not get in the way. It also proves the non-existence of god.
- JunkDNA 16y agoI didn't intend for that comment to sound quite as snarky as it did. But my point is that real time speech translation needs to work precisely in those situations. Voice recognition and computerized translation have been around for a while. They are nearly always stymied by the problems mentioned in the article we have been "close" to this for at least a decade. What would impress me is if they had developed new algorithms to overcome these exceptionally challenging problems.
- jokermatt999 16y agoVoice recognition and computerized translation have been around for a while. Now your reaction makes sense. If you're viewing at as an advance in the technology here (research wise, etc), then this announcement has nothing new. But from a standpoint of anyone with an Android phone having access to this whenever they want (accessibility and ease of use), this is incredible. I think most people are concerned with the latter, but you do have a point about there being nothing "new" here.
- brown9-2 16y agoWho would have thought that alpha software is in fact very alpha-like in it's qualities?
- felipe 16y agoThe "background noise, thick accents, and quick speech" is actually the most difficult part. Google did not really do anything new. Speech recognition is around for a while, as well as translation engines. Although putting the two technologies on the cell phone makes an impressive demo and good PR, it does not actually solves the problem at a practical level.
- spiffworks 16y agoJust tried it, works only for the English-Spanish pair right now, but the reliability is pretty good considering that they're calling it an Alpha.
- gms 16y agoThe real question is how far it will move from alpha, if at all.
- ghshephard 16y agoThis is almost moving Kurzweil's prediction from "mostly correct" to "correct". "Early 2000s * Translating telephones allow people to speak to each other in different languages. * Machines designed to transcribe speech into computer text allow deaf people to understand spoken words." Every time he notches another victory, I pay closer and closer attention to his other guesses that are 10 - 30 years out.
- billpaetzke 16y agoPredictions made by Ray Kurzweil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzweil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzwei...
- abecedarius 16y agoHow well does this system handle your second bullet point (transcription for conversation with the deaf)? I have a use for that but, not having an Android phone yet, I can't just try it out.
- Splines 16y agoProbably just as well (as the deaf person wouldn't have to interpret the text-to-speech engine). I'd wager that this project was built on the back of GOOG-411.
- michaelbuckbee 16y agoDragon Dictate is available for both iPhone and Android which would seem sufficient for a face to face conversation (or at least better than the alternative).
- BRadmin 16y agoScreenings for a documentary about him, Transcendent Man, were finally posted yesterday: http://transcendentman.com/ http://transcendentman.com/
- nazgulnarsil 16y agoI was forced to revise my estimate in kurzweil's direction of 2040 for AI/whole brain emulation after seeing AIXI-MC, and the memristor brain project being funded by DARPA. My original estimate was more like 2080.
- kenjackson 16y agoTake this and Word Lens like capability -- if I was in junior high, I'd make the argument that there's no need for me to learn a foreign language. In a few years, I can speak and write any language there is!
- alextp 16y agoThis might save you some time/money, but it certainly can't bridge the gap between different languages. Keep in mind that "to translate is to betray" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traduttore,_traditore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traduttore,_traditore
- throw_away 16y agoDoug Hofstadter of GEB fame wrote an interesting book on this called Le Ton Beau de Marot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_Beau_de_Marot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_Beau_de_Marot) where he argued that 100% translation was pretty much impossible, and machine translation in particular. In that book he translated one poem from French to English thirty-six times, each time capturing some nuance of the original, but showing that no single translation could possibly capture everything.
- jokermatt999 16y agoThere's still nuances and subtleties that will be lost in machine translation (I'd assume it would still strong AI to have otherwise), so there is still plenty reason to fully learn a language. However, learning a language at the junior high/high school level of two years or so of minimal study probably can be replaced by machine translation in terms of being able to communicate basic thoughts.
- ximeng 16y agoImagine having a real-time interpreted conversation like they do in this Microsoft video: http://zekeweeks.com/2010/03/03/real-life-babelfish-the-translating-telephone/ http://zekeweeks.com/2010/03/03/real-life-babelfish-the-tran... The delay and imperfections would mean you communicate less than half the speed you would if you spoke the language natively. That's going to get annoying quickly.
- Andrenid 16y agoIn the last 6-12 months alone i'm really starting to see "the future" that I dreamed of as a kid. Between this article, http://questvisual.com/ http://questvisual.com/, Microsoft Kinect, Nintendo 3DS, Microsoft Surface 2 (first version didn't impress me, was so huge and clunky), Amazon's Kindle 3 (huge fan of HHGTTG, the Kindle basically IS the guide) etc... As a life-long nerd/geek, it's pretty awe-inspiring.
- enjo 16y agoI'll second this. The Kinect, in particular, is my invention of the year. I've had it for two months now and the freaking menu in dance central STILL doesn't get old. Just moving through that menu is the single most tactile thing I've ever done when interacting with a machine. I LOVE it... and I can't wait to see how that technology grows and changes in the coming years.
- othello 16y agoI would also add to that list the Emotiv kit (http://www.emotiv.com http://www.emotiv.com), which allows "to create applications that can be controlled by your mind" by making use of the same type of technology that allows paralytics to control robotic arms. Actually, the technology alone is highly impressive, but that an SDK is available to anyone for $299 is nothing short of mind-boggling.
- MichaelApproved 16y ago$299 for the device + $500 for the sdk.
- roschler 16y agoNo. The $500 Developer edition includes both the SDK and the device (headset).
- Estragon 16y agoActually, a smart phone with offline wikipedia is a much closer approximation to The Guide than the kindle.
- michaelbuckbee 16y agoWhat's most interesting to me is that Google seems to be moving forward with a strategy of competing with iOS via services instead of just applications. Services (like Conversation Mode translate, constantly updated turn by turn GPS driving directions, more deeply integrated Google Talks) give them leverage against the carriers, who have to meet Google guidelines for Android in order to include the flagship apps and represent a really high bar that Apple would have to overcome to compete. I realize it isn't exactly as cut and dried as services vs applications, but it is certainly a strong move that plays to Google's strengths.
- nostrademons 16y agoI suspect that mobile in general will move towards services instead of applications. There's a lot of data crunching that you can do when you have a data collection device in every person's pockets, but doing that crunching on the client will drain your batteries it to time. I predict that the really interesting mobile apps will have a thin (but native) client that only does data collection & UI, and then the most computationally interesting piece will be hosted in the cloud somewhere.
- chiquillo 16y agoTranslate this: Ojú, na de eso quita el sentio, que va, sufrio está pero no quemao.
- pfarrell 16y agoMy hovercraft is full of eels. Sorry, couldn't resist. Natural language processing, could we really see major improvements in our lifetimes? My gut tells me there are so many nuances to the way we work that the best we can get to will have to include many of the inconsistencies we have in understanding each other.
- erikstarck 16y agoThe vodka is strong but the meat is rotten.
- pedanticfreak 16y agoI have nothing meaningful to contribute, but I want to say this is a monumental step forward. Some people here seem to predict this heralds the end of language education for most people. Maybe that's true. But I actually think this will contribute to earlier and more frequent exposure to foreign languages. And that may ultimately do more for language learning than compulsory education ever did.
- andrewljohnson 16y agoDouglas Adams was mostly right. It's just not a fish.
- fhars 16y agoExcept that if you actually travel in parts of the world where you would need this service, international data roaming charges for accessing this service will be so outrageous that it may just be cheaper to hire a professional interpreter to travel with you.
- johnyzee 16y agoHas anyone else been waiting for this 'invention' forever? Between speech recognition and machine translation it seemed to be a solved problem for the longest time.
- trurl123 16y agoAt first google should improve http://translate.google.com http://translate.google.com to show valid translations.
- tocomment 16y agoAnyOne know when this will be available to install? I'm itching to try it out.