8 ms·

I look forward to the day where I'm wearing my headphones in a foreign land and hearing all of the discussions in my own language. The "universal translator" w

I look forward to the day where I'm wearing my headphones in a foreign land and hearing all of the discussions in my own language. The "universal translator" which was part of Star Trek and a lot of other Sci-Fi I was exposed to as a kid was something I was really fascinated with. My Dad worked as a simultaneous French->English translator and sadly spent long hours away from home and, as a kid, I started trying to build a translator so that it could do his work and he could be home more. Translation is important work and one that could help a lot of people. It's my hope that we get to the point where these models work entirely on locally carried resources.

sacvnsune 3y ago
If I am not wrong, Google Pixel buds offer live translate feature.
- echelon 3y ago
  Not in the voice of the original speaker.
  - stevenicr 3y ago
    now if I could just get the pixel buds tech to remove the voice of the original speaker and translate some youtube videos from thick accent english into no accent am-english.
    - ChuckMcM 3y ago
      This is a really interesting use case. I could definitely see this as a service for content providers to get more reach and I think you could justify a subscription price for the service based on this. By keeping creating speaker specific tonal ranges and profiles you maintain the better cohesion on the final product.
    - keerthiko 3y ago
      Obligatory, not directed at you in particular since I'm sure you mean no offense, but just voicing a pet peeve: I grew up bilingual outside the US, and speak English with a hybrid British/Indian/Middle Eastern accent (with some of my personal quirks, and mixing increasing amounts of various American accents over time). I can understand English in nearly any accent (Singaporean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Nigerian, eastern European) as long as the words involved are globally used and the grammar is passably queen's. Especially after hearing it for about an hour. And people who natively speak English with these various accents usually can understand my English better than they can an average American accent. Yet in this country, my accent is belittled, despite being perfectly understood and more versatile. Even by others who don't speak with the American accent! This is the problem of the "default accent" anywhere being referred to as "no accent", and therefore anything deviating is considered "having an accent". This makes "accent" a negative trait, scaling from 0-bad to heavy-bad. But if the vernacular were such that we said "American accent" instead of "no accent", then noone's accent is bad, just not used to. Most of my non-American peers who were raised on English have a better command of the language than my American ones, yet they are mocked for their accents as if they don't know the language, when in reality it's the Americans lack of familiarity with the language (as its used globally) preventing them from comprehending the language. So yes, put in more work, the world is shrinking and English is the global language (for better or worse). What you're saying is spoken from a position of privilege because the culture allows you to mock others' accents and imply your version of it is the correct one that everyone else should put in work to provide you with, rather than the other way around. Every time you hear English with an accent other than British, American or Australian, remember that it usually means the speaker knows at least one entire other language as well, probably one that you would sound like an idiot if you tried to speak it. Don't be rude or dismissive of their command of English. In fact, you were so close — you called it a "no accent am-english", when you could have just called it what it is — "an american accent".
      - freedomben 3y ago
        [flagged]
        archagon 3y ago
  - scotty79 3y ago
    It would be really cool as an assistance in practicing correct pronunciation and accent. Hearing your voice saying it right and then hearing how you actually said it the last time you tried might help you to get both into alignment.
TheHumanist 3y ago
Babel Fish
dimitrios1 3y ago
Another lesson we can learn from Sci-Fi is very often different species on a planet would have their tribal / local languages and dialects but all spoke a common tongue. I think this is the more humanizing approach, rather than delegate even more of our fleshly processing power to machines.
- somewhereoutth 3y ago
  This seems to be what is happening in Europe (and perhaps more generally across the globe), with English being the common tongue. Question is, what will happen to the tribal / local languages? Will they survive?
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    It varies. A lot of local languages have gone extinct already. There's linguists hard at work to try and document / record dying languages, but it won't be the same as living the language from childhood.
  - nemomarx 3y ago
    Historically, we've seen the larger languages build themselves up by intentionally stamping out the teaching / use of smaller local languages. France banned some regional languages from appearing on broadcast television for years, and etc. This might be required to get full buy in for a unified language, which is a bit sad but makes some sense - if you ensure it's taking up more and more of media and culture more people know it from immersion, and other languages are reduced to being spoken at home / with friends and that's going to cut into how many people really are fluent in them.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  then of course, there's always Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
rangestransform 3y ago
how am i supposed to talk shit with my friends about other people in public then
- flanbiscuit 3y ago
  I'm curious to know how well these models can pick up slang. Maybe if you talk shit in as thick a slang as you can it won't be able to give a good enough translation.
  - kredd 3y ago
    With my bi/trilingual friends who speak the same languages, we intermix them to make our point more clear. Don’t think models will be good enough for mixes for a few more years, so we’re safe!
    - smcin 3y ago
      Can you show us an example of such a sentence?
      - kredd 3y ago
        Hm, think of things like “On va bruncher” (we’re going to brunch). The word “brunch” doesn’t exist in french, but we add suffixes to fit into the sentence. Very common in Montreal. My french isn’t very good to do that on the fly, but my francophone friends do that all the time. In my other languages that I am actually fluent in, it’s kinda the same — you use specific suffixes to soften or embolden your point and so on. Maybe add “exclamation making sounds in specific language” too. Eventually your nouns and verbs end up in different languages, with different suffixes where it “makes sense”, yet the person whom you’re talking to will “get it”. Would be curious to try the new Seamless model on such speeches.
        bertil 3y ago
        This is extremely common for every new technology: “upload,” “download,” “stream,” “google,” “FaceTime,” most code patterns, all the new ML apps, “venmo” or whatever the name of the app you use for payment, etc. all of those are taken as is, slapped a verb termination and it’s good enough. That’s true in German, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, and Spanish. The only thing that doesn’t work is if you talk to people too young to remember Skype. Then you feel old.
baby 3y ago
I’m wearing the Rayban Meta right now and they are already mind blowing, I can already talk to that Meta AI assistant seamlessly. I bet one of the future iteration will have exactly this.
- figers 3y ago
  Curious, what do you ask it besides take a picture / video or what's the weather? I have a pair and have only asked it that so far...
  - baby 3y ago
    Whenever I have a question and used to pull up bard/chatGPT, and if I’m wearing my glasses. Kind of like having an expert next to you all the time.
diob 3y ago
The problem is you need a full sentence, plus surrounding sentences to properly translate a lot of things (aka context matters). So no matter what, conversations in your native speech would have to be delayed before translation.
- sexy_seedbox 3y ago
  So then we need something like neuralink to get the whole thought from one's brain first, then the sentences are processed properly for the context, then translated before the speech is delivered.
  - kabouseng 3y ago
    Most thoughts are in a language. There is no one underlying universal machine language for the brain.
    - plastic3169 3y ago
      Are most thoughts in language? This doesn’t reflect my experience. Language floats on top, but there is layers under there. You can also feel it when you end up thinking in another language. It does not go through the first one but is a thing of it’s own. Pretty sure there is nothing universal there though as you say.
    - sexy_seedbox 3y ago
      What about blind deaf people, do they think in a language?
- ChuckMcM 3y ago
  I think I could adapt to that. But it would be an interesting experiment.
- ItsMattyG 3y ago
  My understanding is that they trained a separate model to specifically estimate when they have enough context to begin translating, as a skilled translator would.
freetanga 3y ago
[flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mbforbes 3y ago
I worked on building exactly this earlier this year. I was hanging out in Taiwan for a few months and thought, surely the Babel Fish should exist by now. I did several experiments recording from all the microphones I could on my iPhone and AirPods while out in the wild. My conclusion: it's impossible right now for that hardware given the microphones we have and what they pick up. So much of what's spoken is at a combination of (a) high distance (b) low volume (c) background obscuration. Something that was clear as day to my ears would barely register on the mics. While context is of course an issue, the raw audio didn't have enough to even translate. The one caveat is that there might be low-level (i.e., Apple-only) access to headphone microphones that capture the environment to do noise cancellation. I'm not sure though---I couldn't find them on any API. For cases where you do have clear audio, existing apps (e.g., Google Translate) are so close to achieving this, but don't let you specify audio outputs with enough fine grained control. By default, it will start screaming out of your phone what you were attempting to silently translate.
- godelski 3y ago
  There's also some magic to the Universal Translator and Babel Fish: they perform zero-shot real time translation. That is, they are able to translate (in all directions) novel languages that were not previously heard[0]. It is an open question, with likely a negative answers, that there is a universal grammar even among humans[1] (the definition itself is vague but even the most abstract version is suspect and highly likely to not be universal across species). I think no one will be surprised if it is always impossible to interpret an entire language based on only a few words (let alone do it in real time) This isn't a knock down, because even a trained device is insanely useful, it's just a note about limitations and triage. This is awesome stuff and I can't wait for the day we have transnational headphones. It's an incredibly complex problem that I'm sure is not short of surprises. [0] There are a few exceptions such as Star Trek TNG's episode Darmok, S5E2, where the Tamarians' language is unable to be translated due to its reliance on cultural references (the literal words are translated but the semantic meanings are not). It's a well known episode and if you hear anyone saying "Shaka, when the walls fell" (translates to "Failure") they are referencing this episode (often not using the language accurately but who cares (nerds. The answer is nerds)). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar
pokstad 3y ago
I look forward to the day when that problem is solved by a company that doesn’t mine my data to sell ads.
p1mrx 3y ago
> so that it could do his work and he could be home more. That's a nice way of saying unemployed.

sacvnsune 3y ago

If I am not wrong, Google Pixel buds offer live translate feature.

echelon 3y ago
Not in the voice of the original speaker.
- stevenicr 3y ago
  now if I could just get the pixel buds tech to remove the voice of the original speaker and translate some youtube videos from thick accent english into no accent am-english.
  - ChuckMcM 3y ago
    This is a really interesting use case. I could definitely see this as a service for content providers to get more reach and I think you could justify a subscription price for the service based on this. By keeping creating speaker specific tonal ranges and profiles you maintain the better cohesion on the final product.
  - keerthiko 3y ago
    Obligatory, not directed at you in particular since I'm sure you mean no offense, but just voicing a pet peeve: I grew up bilingual outside the US, and speak English with a hybrid British/Indian/Middle Eastern accent (with some of my personal quirks, and mixing increasing amounts of various American accents over time). I can understand English in nearly any accent (Singaporean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Nigerian, eastern European) as long as the words involved are globally used and the grammar is passably queen's. Especially after hearing it for about an hour. And people who natively speak English with these various accents usually can understand my English better than they can an average American accent. Yet in this country, my accent is belittled, despite being perfectly understood and more versatile. Even by others who don't speak with the American accent! This is the problem of the "default accent" anywhere being referred to as "no accent", and therefore anything deviating is considered "having an accent". This makes "accent" a negative trait, scaling from 0-bad to heavy-bad. But if the vernacular were such that we said "American accent" instead of "no accent", then noone's accent is bad, just not used to. Most of my non-American peers who were raised on English have a better command of the language than my American ones, yet they are mocked for their accents as if they don't know the language, when in reality it's the Americans lack of familiarity with the language (as its used globally) preventing them from comprehending the language. So yes, put in more work, the world is shrinking and English is the global language (for better or worse). What you're saying is spoken from a position of privilege because the culture allows you to mock others' accents and imply your version of it is the correct one that everyone else should put in work to provide you with, rather than the other way around. Every time you hear English with an accent other than British, American or Australian, remember that it usually means the speaker knows at least one entire other language as well, probably one that you would sound like an idiot if you tried to speak it. Don't be rude or dismissive of their command of English. In fact, you were so close — you called it a "no accent am-english", when you could have just called it what it is — "an american accent".
    - freedomben 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - archagon 3y ago
- scotty79 3y ago
  It would be really cool as an assistance in practicing correct pronunciation and accent. Hearing your voice saying it right and then hearing how you actually said it the last time you tried might help you to get both into alignment.

TheHumanist 3y ago

Babel Fish

dimitrios1 3y ago

Another lesson we can learn from Sci-Fi is very often different species on a planet would have their tribal / local languages and dialects but all spoke a common tongue. I think this is the more humanizing approach, rather than delegate even more of our fleshly processing power to machines.

somewhereoutth 3y ago
This seems to be what is happening in Europe (and perhaps more generally across the globe), with English being the common tongue. Question is, what will happen to the tribal / local languages? Will they survive?
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  It varies. A lot of local languages have gone extinct already. There's linguists hard at work to try and document / record dying languages, but it won't be the same as living the language from childhood.
- nemomarx 3y ago
  Historically, we've seen the larger languages build themselves up by intentionally stamping out the teaching / use of smaller local languages. France banned some regional languages from appearing on broadcast television for years, and etc. This might be required to get full buy in for a unified language, which is a bit sad but makes some sense - if you ensure it's taking up more and more of media and culture more people know it from immersion, and other languages are reduced to being spoken at home / with friends and that's going to cut into how many people really are fluent in them.
micromacrofoot 3y ago
then of course, there's always Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

rangestransform 3y ago

how am i supposed to talk shit with my friends about other people in public then

flanbiscuit 3y ago
I'm curious to know how well these models can pick up slang. Maybe if you talk shit in as thick a slang as you can it won't be able to give a good enough translation.
- kredd 3y ago
  With my bi/trilingual friends who speak the same languages, we intermix them to make our point more clear. Don’t think models will be good enough for mixes for a few more years, so we’re safe!
  - smcin 3y ago
    Can you show us an example of such a sentence?
    - kredd 3y ago
      Hm, think of things like “On va bruncher” (we’re going to brunch). The word “brunch” doesn’t exist in french, but we add suffixes to fit into the sentence. Very common in Montreal. My french isn’t very good to do that on the fly, but my francophone friends do that all the time. In my other languages that I am actually fluent in, it’s kinda the same — you use specific suffixes to soften or embolden your point and so on. Maybe add “exclamation making sounds in specific language” too. Eventually your nouns and verbs end up in different languages, with different suffixes where it “makes sense”, yet the person whom you’re talking to will “get it”. Would be curious to try the new Seamless model on such speeches.
      - bertil 3y ago
        This is extremely common for every new technology: “upload,” “download,” “stream,” “google,” “FaceTime,” most code patterns, all the new ML apps, “venmo” or whatever the name of the app you use for payment, etc. all of those are taken as is, slapped a verb termination and it’s good enough. That’s true in German, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, and Spanish. The only thing that doesn’t work is if you talk to people too young to remember Skype. Then you feel old.

baby 3y ago

I’m wearing the Rayban Meta right now and they are already mind blowing, I can already talk to that Meta AI assistant seamlessly. I bet one of the future iteration will have exactly this.

figers 3y ago
Curious, what do you ask it besides take a picture / video or what's the weather? I have a pair and have only asked it that so far...
- baby 3y ago
  Whenever I have a question and used to pull up bard/chatGPT, and if I’m wearing my glasses. Kind of like having an expert next to you all the time.

diob 3y ago

The problem is you need a full sentence, plus surrounding sentences to properly translate a lot of things (aka context matters). So no matter what, conversations in your native speech would have to be delayed before translation.

sexy_seedbox 3y ago
So then we need something like neuralink to get the whole thought from one's brain first, then the sentences are processed properly for the context, then translated before the speech is delivered.
- kabouseng 3y ago
  Most thoughts are in a language. There is no one underlying universal machine language for the brain.
  - plastic3169 3y ago
    Are most thoughts in language? This doesn’t reflect my experience. Language floats on top, but there is layers under there. You can also feel it when you end up thinking in another language. It does not go through the first one but is a thing of it’s own. Pretty sure there is nothing universal there though as you say.
  - sexy_seedbox 3y ago
    What about blind deaf people, do they think in a language?
ChuckMcM 3y ago
I think I could adapt to that. But it would be an interesting experiment.
ItsMattyG 3y ago
My understanding is that they trained a separate model to specifically estimate when they have enough context to begin translating, as a skilled translator would.

freetanga 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mbforbes 3y ago

I worked on building exactly this earlier this year. I was hanging out in Taiwan for a few months and thought, surely the Babel Fish should exist by now. I did several experiments recording from all the microphones I could on my iPhone and AirPods while out in the wild. My conclusion: it's impossible right now for that hardware given the microphones we have and what they pick up. So much of what's spoken is at a combination of (a) high distance (b) low volume (c) background obscuration. Something that was clear as day to my ears would barely register on the mics. While context is of course an issue, the raw audio didn't have enough to even translate. The one caveat is that there might be low-level (i.e., Apple-only) access to headphone microphones that capture the environment to do noise cancellation. I'm not sure though---I couldn't find them on any API. For cases where you do have clear audio, existing apps (e.g., Google Translate) are so close to achieving this, but don't let you specify audio outputs with enough fine grained control. By default, it will start screaming out of your phone what you were attempting to silently translate.

godelski 3y ago
There's also some magic to the Universal Translator and Babel Fish: they perform zero-shot real time translation. That is, they are able to translate (in all directions) novel languages that were not previously heard[0]. It is an open question, with likely a negative answers, that there is a universal grammar even among humans[1] (the definition itself is vague but even the most abstract version is suspect and highly likely to not be universal across species). I think no one will be surprised if it is always impossible to interpret an entire language based on only a few words (let alone do it in real time) This isn't a knock down, because even a trained device is insanely useful, it's just a note about limitations and triage. This is awesome stuff and I can't wait for the day we have transnational headphones. It's an incredibly complex problem that I'm sure is not short of surprises. [0] There are a few exceptions such as Star Trek TNG's episode Darmok, S5E2, where the Tamarians' language is unable to be translated due to its reliance on cultural references (the literal words are translated but the semantic meanings are not). It's a well known episode and if you hear anyone saying "Shaka, when the walls fell" (translates to "Failure") they are referencing this episode (often not using the language accurately but who cares (nerds. The answer is nerds)). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar

pokstad 3y ago

I look forward to the day when that problem is solved by a company that doesn’t mine my data to sell ads.

p1mrx 3y ago

> so that it could do his work and he could be home more. That's a nice way of saying unemployed.