News: Personal Tech
Google working on universal translator
08.02.2010
Douglas Adams and the Dr Who series may not have been too far off reality when they came up with the idea of a universal language translator because Google is working on complex linguistic software that could translate phone conversations almost instantly.
In a mix between Adams' Babel fish that plugs into your ear and converts soundwaves into brainwaves, and the universal translator technology of the Tardis, this mixture of voice recognition and language translation is something Google hopes to have as a working product within the next few years.
This universal translator technology would be building upon products like Google Translate, which currently encompasses 52 languages, has cross-language searches and an option to auto detect the language of a given text.
Google also has sophisticated voice-recognition technology, as demonstrated on the Nexus One smart phone when it made its debut, and with the ability to understand and carry out voice requests, such as web searches.
"We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years' time," Frank Och, Google's head of translation services, told the Times.
"Everyone has a different voice, accent and pitch," said Och. "But recognition should be effective with mobile phones because by nature they are personal to you. The phone should get a feel for your voice from past voice search queries, for example," he added.
By Marie Boran
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I wish Google well but, as a linguist, I'm not convinced that they are aware of the enormity of the task that faces them. I advocate a non-technological solution, i.e. wider use of the planned international language Esperanto. At least we know it works.
Posted on 08 February 2010 by Bill Chapman