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Universal translator almost here?
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| Vector A |
http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...anslator-skype?
| quote: | For Captain Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise, seeking out new life and new civilisations wouldn't have been much use without a universal translator to deal with new languages too. Fortunately for the denizens of the 23rd century, Microsoft has begun making it a reality, two centuries early.
The company unveiled a new service for Skype on Tuesday that can understand spoken words and translate them into another language, and speak them back almost in real time.
Skype Translator will be available for Windows 8 before the end of the year, after 15 years of research, but Microsoft intends to make the service available to other platforms. Skype currently has 300 million monthly users spread across TVs, computers, tablets and smartphones.
“Skype has always been about breaking down barriers. And the language barrier is huge. It has been a blocker to productivity and human connection,” noted Gurdeep Pall, corporate vice president of Skype and Lync at Microsoft in a blog post. “Skype Translator helps us overcome this barrier. It’s going to make sure you can communicate with anyone without language barriers.”
Pall demonstrated the technology at the Code conference in California on Tuesday, showing real-time translation of a Skype video call with a german colleague.
Pall was speaking English, allowing the translation system to then convert his speech into spoken German, while his video caller spoke German allowing Pall and the audience to hear the translation into English in near real-time.
The system only made one minor mistake in the three-minute-long conversation, demonstrating the improved word, meaning and order recognition Microsoft has made since the technology was first demonstrated translating English to Chinese two years ago. |
Video demo and more info at the link... |
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| Dykes_on_Jay |
| I don't like this new and lazy world. It's more convenient, not better. Get off of your ass and learn something. |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dykes_on_Jay
I don't like this new and lazy world. It's more convenient, not better. Get off of your ass and learn something. |
Spoken like a true Asian parent, lah! :p |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
| 'Lah' is Hal backwards, lahhhh |
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| echosystm |
| quote: | Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On
Spoken like a true Asian parent lah~~~ ^.^ |
Fixed. It doesn't count without superfluous tildes and an asian smiley. |
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| Dykes_on_Jay |
| You break you buy! |
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| Lilith |
| Cool, life's too short to learn German |
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| Viber |
^
| quote: | My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.
-Mark Twain from The Awful German Language
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:toothless |
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