Google working on voice translator phone, redefining synergy
By Vlad Savov 
posted February 8th 2010 10:13AM
posted February 8th 2010 10:13AM
Okay, so Google has this expansive online translation service, which we all know, use, and sometimes even love. Google also has its own branded phone, with a voice recognition function that we frankly adore. So what's a brave new age company with bottomless pockets to do but try to splice the two together into some kind of omnilingual instant translator? Speech-to-speech translation -- long the exclusive plaything of fanciful sci-fi writers -- is said by Franz Och, Google's head of translation services, to be a viable possibility within a measly couple of years. The Mountain View approach to overcoming the inherent problems of variable pitch, tone and accents in speech will be to use each person's phone to accrue data on his or her linguistic idiosyncrasies, so that the more the phone's voice recognition is used, the more accurate it becomes. Sounds tres bien to us.
@(Unverified)
Actually, that wasn't bad. A bit like Yoda, but that's probably your native language word order and syntax.
@(Unverified) Didn't care to C&P the original text? Would've been better. Then we can actually know how universal and well-understood that language is to begin with and set expectations. We could crowd-source what you actually put in there is good grammar to begin with. And lastly, working as an English teacher in Asia, let's just say that people that major in English aren't able to speak with a level of complete sentences and conjugation that GT provided, to say it isn't ready we can definitely come up with worse examples but it'll still provide a better alternative than having nothing at all, plus most people here are talking to much in the here and now when this story is about the future.
@(Unverified)
Huh? That actually seemed pretty good to me. I understood exactly what you were saying without any trouble. Of course it's not perfect but it's still early. I don't know why people feel the need to complain about GT in its CURRENT form. Like Google's not going to tweak and perfect it before they release this phone?
Me no more learn inglish
Coming to your Nexus One in ................
@(Unverified) It's there now. Just go to google.com/translate using your Nexus One. Dictate the input text, click translate and click the sound button to use speech synthesis to speak out the resulting translation.
Someone just needs to automate that in a one-click Android app though. I think the Google Translate API is available for anyone to do that right now.
@Charbax Actually they don't provide voice for many languages. Also, this says "omnilingual" which implies adding languages that they don't even provide text for.
TranslationParty is an excellent preview of how well round-trip translation works right now:
http://translationparty.com/#6400347
This is a good time to mention that the term synergy - is fucking stupid.
input: "Hi can you tell me how to get to the bathroom."
output in Chinese: "Hi please stick the can in my rectum."
For anyone who's interested, there's a free app called "Talk to me" in the marketplace, and it does the same thing, to a somewhat crude/limited extent.
Oh... I'm waiting for this techno gem to arrive to middle east...
...Ive been a long time user of WinMo, always hated the iPhone (it is a a masterpiece but the strict control is too much, Jobs is a genius but he is becoming more like a south american dictator). I hope Google will start looking to potential international clients with more attention (andriod App srore only in US.. WTH!!!), Apple did just that and they deserve my respect.. I'll still wait for the N1 though... I can feel N1 is waiting for me too :-D
Seeing as to the fact that this will take years to get to work properly, and taking into consideration that thousands of translators and hundreds of companies have tried to get this to work for years (but couldn't) why 'leak' what 'we are working on it' right now?
Make it work or or it's no news! I call BS!
@digistar If you are a native english Speaker with little accent, you can do pretty amazingly good speech to speech translation to French, German and Spanish right now today. Just go to google.com/translate with your Nexus One, dictate a text, click translate and click the speech button to speak out the resulting translation using speech synthesis. It's very accurate today.
@digistar Do you want hundreds more to continue and begin doing the same thing? Or do you want to scare them off while continuing to show the public what your company is about? Or do you want to cater to digistar's desires. This is like an apple story, if this isn't news to you you can gloss it over.
Yes, but will it insert targeted ads into the translation?
gotta love google.
next they'll be working on something that'll just read your mind.
Considering how well their transcriptions work in Google Voice I 'm not sure I would trust Google to translate for me.
As a hard of hearing person, a live & mobile translation service if it works properly would be huge. I can only imagine the more ease I would have with phone calls, being able to understand my voicemails as well as being able to place the device in the middle of a group to understand what people are saying if I didn't understand what they said. If they can get it to work, it may have a big influence on my lifestyle & confidence where I may worry about understanding what people are saying. It's good news to me that they feel like this is important & are trying even if the technology may not be quite 'there' yet. I
Next on engadget "Google owns the world" *cheers in the background* i can see that day coming :)
Great. Now that Skynet can learn to speak Human, it'll be more efficient at killing you.
The picture of the Nexus One seems out of my place/misleading seeing as this won't get implemented until 2 years or more from now, when the Nexus One either doesn't exist or exists as a different phone entirely.
Wow, this should be a really useful feature. And I'll betcha it's going to be free.
Don't you just love Skyne...
Google!
Don't you just love Google!
googles taking over the world....one step at a time, they conquered the internet, paper maps are obsolete, they have satellite imagery of the entire planet, even street view, now they are even taking over our languages!! whats next google? our soul?
@noob4u They already own that
Shameful Engadget didn't pick this up earlier. I made this call months ago. "Where Google is heading… Google Translation for Android" http://bit.ly/4Y1yVW