Google developing a translator for smartphones

Google developing a translator for smartphones

www.physorg.com

Head of translation services at Google, Franz Och, said he believed almost instant speech-to-speech translation should be possible if the accuracy of voice recognition and machine translation can be improved. He said Google is working on this, and he expected the technology to “work reasonably well” in a few years. There has been a great deal of progress in voice recognition and machine translation in recent years, especially the latter, thanks to funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

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السلام عليكم subbah-el-kheir, grüß Gott, Sua s'dei, 你好, mambo, bonjour, Guten Tag, γεια σου, shalom, góðan dag, ciào, konnichi wa, labdien, laba diena, namaskar, hei, eyhay, alô , Privet!, howzitgaun, hola, tja, sawa dee-ka, dobriy ranok..................Hello

No need for all that. Technology will have us all speaking the same language soon enough. I can't wait to get a bluetooth that just translates from person to person talking face to face. How cool is this.


www.physorg.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I am a language instructor. This cannot be good for my business.

Google is working on this? Just like they worked with "Google Translation?" Yeah. This won't turn out too well no matter what the cost.

Originally posted by cveng
I am a language instructor. This cannot be good for my business.

No worries with Google on the case you still have a job..

Their online translation sucks 99% of the time.. Ask any non english people who come to ATS.

I don't believe it will happen any time soon, it's just too idealistic if you ask me.

How could it translate something like:

"um...howyadooin, c'nI speak t'wangifeezaround, spob frmeadoffice"

People would have to be really good at pronounciation, and would they account for all the slang in the world?

I'll stick to actually learning something instead rather than shelling out for another convenience for lazies.

Personally, I do a lot of translating online, but I do the same translation more than once because what I write and how it comes out in another language ALWAYS leaves room for error. It's only from trial and error that I discover the best way to write something that I know will read well for the recipient.

When I can understand what I translate into another language, then I have learned something in the process. That's a good thing.

I'm also sure that over time, we would be inundated with scam calls from people who would normally rely on emails. Not good. No thanks. Having computers phone me up telling me I have "an important message" is annoying enough.