Another Star Trek tech is here: Microsoft-Skype Translator

[Perspicuo]

Microsoft's translation app for Skype is seriously impressive
http://www.networkworld.com/article...on-app-for-skype-is-seriously-impressive.html

Satya Nadella may have underwhelmed at the Code Conference (the powwow held by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher that used to be called D Conference back when they were with All Things D) but a Microsoft demo has left a lot of people seriously impressed.

Skype Translator, as Microsoft is calling it, will be a real-time voice translator that lets you converse with someone who speaks another language than yours. How many languages it will support is unclear. The demo only showed German.

The Official Microsoft Blog: Microsoft demos breakthrough in real-time translated conversations
http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsof...gh-in-real-time-translated-conversations.aspx

t’s been an interesting evening here in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. at the inaugural Code Conference (#CodeCon) where @karaswisher and @waltmossberg are engaging Microsoft CEO @satyanadella in a more than hour-long onstage conversation.

During his conversation with Walt and Kara, Satya discussed his views on how we’re evolving to a more personal, more human era of computing, and I had the good fortune to join Satya on stage to demo – for the the first time publicly – an exciting new capability we’re developing for Skype.

Not quite... but it's a beginning.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yes and no. Star Trek could translate unknown languages... somehow. Really cool tech however.

 

[aeebee50]

I would be interested in buying a translator, especially Spanish.

 

[barbos]

Speech recognition still sucks.
I don't know how good is it on iOS or android but the one builtin in chrome browser is somewhat pathetic with my rather mild (to humans in US) accent. Funny thing is when you say one word it recognize it as another, then you tell it the word it just recognized and it fails to recognize it And the word is not that hard, it just slight accent and it goes nowhere.

I actually have my own speech recognition program. it's not finished yet but it promises to be better than what I have seen so far.

Translation part is actually not that hard, if you limit yourself to ordinary conversation then relatively large base of phrases and patterns can look really impressive, and then really suck when it needs to guess context or meaning right.

 

[barbos]

Yes and no. Star Trek could translate unknown languages... somehow. Really cool tech however.

They do have automated language analyzing tools which could translate unknown language to some degree.
There is relatively small number of ways you can construct a language.

Problem I think would be with speech recognition of unknown language. Current systems are too rigid and mechanical and can't really learn spoken language the way humans do, as I said, it gets confused by a slight accent of known (to the system) language. Imagine how confused it will be by weird sounds of unknown language.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yes and no. Star Trek could translate unknown languages... somehow. Really cool tech however.

They do have automated language analyzing tools which could translate unknown language to some degree.
There is relatively small number of ways you can construct a language.

I think it would be possible in the future to deconstruct a language into its base functions, nouns, verbs, tenses, etc..., but it'd be impossible to know what the words actually mean. Knowing a word is a noun doesn't particularly help much in understanding a sentence unless you know what the actual noun is referring to.

 

[barbos]

Yes and no. Star Trek could translate unknown languages... somehow. Really cool tech however.

They do have automated language analyzing tools which could translate unknown language to some degree.
There is relatively small number of ways you can construct a language.

I think it would be possible in the future to deconstruct a language into its base functions, nouns, verbs, tenses, etc..., but it'd be impossible to know what the words actually mean. Knowing a word is a noun doesn't particularly help much in understanding a sentence unless you know what the actual noun is referring to.

It's hard but not impossible. If you have very long text and you know it has meaning then you can cycle through all combination of word-meaning and see which one gives most meaningful text. And if you have some additional clues about subject of the text or meaning of few words then it will help a lot. So it's possible, especially with humans, harder with space aliens but still I think possible.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

I would be interested in buying a translator, especially Spanish.

I'll give you my teenage son for free if you buy his groceries. You'll need a substantial line of credit.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yes and no. Star Trek could translate unknown languages... somehow. Really cool tech however.

They do have automated language analyzing tools which could translate unknown language to some degree.
There is relatively small number of ways you can construct a language.

I think it would be possible in the future to deconstruct a language into its base functions, nouns, verbs, tenses, etc..., but it'd be impossible to know what the words actually mean. Knowing a word is a noun doesn't particularly help much in understanding a sentence unless you know what the actual noun is referring to.

It's hard but not impossible. If you have very long text and you know it has meaning then you can cycle through all combination of word-meaning and see which one gives most meaningful text.

But I only think that gets you to knowing if the word is a verb, noun, etc... Plenty of nouns would fit in just fine, making it quite difficult for a computer to make a distinction. And my comments are specifically about Star Trek, ie, meeting a new species and just being able to understand the language right off the bat. Perhaps if it you could include context with what was just said in the base language that'd help, but it'd take a bit to make a connection for a universal translator.

Of course, the best part of the translator is the supposing that the alien race also has to have one, as per the DS9 episode when the two races couldn't communicate because the Starfleet things weren't working.

 

[barbos]

Yes and no. Star Trek could translate unknown languages... somehow. Really cool tech however.

They do have automated language analyzing tools which could translate unknown language to some degree.
There is relatively small number of ways you can construct a language.

I think it would be possible in the future to deconstruct a language into its base functions, nouns, verbs, tenses, etc..., but it'd be impossible to know what the words actually mean. Knowing a word is a noun doesn't particularly help much in understanding a sentence unless you know what the actual noun is referring to.

It's hard but not impossible. If you have very long text and you know it has meaning then you can cycle through all combination of word-meaning and see which one gives most meaningful text.

But I only think that gets you to knowing if the word is a verb, noun, etc... Plenty of nouns would fit in just fine, making it quite difficult for a computer to make a distinction. And my comments are specifically about Star Trek, ie, meeting a new species and just being able to understand the language right off the bat. Perhaps if it you could include context with what was just said in the base language that'd help, but it'd take a bit to make a connection for a universal translator.

Of course, the best part of the translator is the supposing that the alien race also has to have one, as per the DS9 episode when the two races couldn't communicate because the Starfleet things weren't working.

If it is a long text then same word and its meaning have to fit in multiple places at once. That's how they decipher unknown languages.

Try taking a long text and replace one word with some other word, text will almost certainly lose meaning at least in some instances.
Of course it is not entirely fair because it is known to you language, but still idea is pretty clear.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yes, but this is about oral communication not looking over a book.

 

[Malintent]

I would be interested in buying a translator, especially Spanish.

My relatively new cell phone (some Android Gallaxy something .. not a phone guy - don't care) came with an app called "Translater" It does exactly this. I talk into it and out comes any one of dozens of languages you can choose from. I already said all the most inappropriate things possible and had it leave a VM for my Dad in Arabic. He thinks terrorists are out to get him now. It even displays the text in the other language / alphabet.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I would be interested in buying a translator, especially Spanish.

My relatively new cell phone (some Android Gallaxy something .. not a phone guy - don't care) came with an app called "Translater" It does exactly this. I talk into it and out comes any one of dozens of languages you can choose from. I already said all the most inappropriate things possible and had it leave a VM for my Dad in Arabic. He thinks terrorists are out to get him now. It even displays the text in the other language / alphabet.

Probably could leave a pleasant voicemail in German and scare the heck out of him too. That language is creepy!

 

[barbos]

Yes, but this is about oral communication not looking over a book.

Same thing mostly, plus in this case there are additional constrains. If you see two people talking then they agreeing/disagreeing, asking/answering questions, etc most of the time.