AutomaticTranslation
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Gmail updates: good news for globalists, bad news for drunks
Ever used Gmail's automatic message translation feature, which lets you receive and send emails without even bothering to notice the native language of your contact? If not, that's probably because it's been lurking in the Labs section along with other ideas undergoing live experimentation. As of now though, translation should be right there in front of you as a regular feature, and honestly, it brings a whole new life to foreign spam. Meanwhile, other Lab features have been sacked, such as the Old Snakey time-frittering game and also Mail Goggles, which tested your sobriety with math puzzles before letting you click 'Send' in the wee hours of the morning. Ah well, the best labs are often the least crowded.
NHK's automated, animated sign language translator adds gestures to subtitles (video)
We've seen quite a few devices designed to help hearing impaired users communicate via phone or computer, but Japan's NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories has just announced a new animated translation system to help get important news to deaf viewers . While televised subtitles may work for those who understand the language, people who were born deaf and learned sign language from an early age can have significantly more difficulty. NHK's system, unveiled at Technology Open House 2011, bypasses this problem by automatically comparing Japanese text to sign language, converting equivalent words into animated onscreen gestures, and replacing differing words with appropriate synonyms. There are, however, a few kinks to work out. While comprehensible, the translations aren't exactly fluent and researchers have been forced to manually adjust some awkward transitions between words. The ultimate goal is to create a system that could be used during emergencies or natural disasters, allowing deaf citizens to receive urgent broadcasts as instantly as their hearing compatriots. You can see it in action, after the break.
DARPA BOLT initiative wants real-time spoken translation, Douglas Adams' ghost says it's about time
Thanks to online tools like Google Translate we're now able to communicate with people in nearly any language -- maybe not perfectly, but well enough to get the general idea across, and livened up by the occasional humorous mistranslation. Now DARPA wants that done wholesale and with military precision, launching the BOLT initiative. That stands for Boundless Operational Language Translation, and DARPA is giving interested parties until May 19th of this year to submit proposals for how they'll manage to achieve the department's lofty goals, which include written and spoken translation into English of "multiple languages." If you're thinking of competing you can find all the details at the source link, though curiously you won't find a single Vorgon dialect mentioned.
Google working on voice translator phone, redefining synergy
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.
