In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
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Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#2It's hard to imagine that it will work smoothly enough to be useful, at least right away, and more of an interesting gimmicky gadget. I'm looking forward to trying it regardless, assuming they succeed in releasing it (due September).
edit: Slightly misleading on their website. Says "Signup on the waitlist and be entered to win a FREE pair!" When you sign-up it then says they are giving away one per month and you can get one entry into the prize draw by doing certain things such as tweeting about them or liking them on FB, but that I have 0 entries for signing up to the waitlist. Meh, I would have signed up for updates anyway, and don't particularly care about a contest I'd likely not win, it's just the principle of misleading wording.
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#3Now, if there were a product that would have appropriately been called babelfish, this would have been it.
But no, "pilot". I guess yahoo copyrighted babelfish?
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#4I can't wait for the mis-translation anecdotes to start pouring in ... maybe I should make a site to collect them :)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/google-translat...
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#5Now, if there were a product that would have appropriately been called babelfish, this would have been it. But no, "pilot". I guess yahoo copyrighted babelfish?
Could they trademark (it wouldn't be copyright) a term that they themselves copied from a work of fiction they don't own the copyright to, given that the context (i.e. what it does) isn't different to that in the work of fiction?
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#6It's not wet and squirmy like a babel fish, but I fear the consequences of it being able to fully translate product/sales-speak into engineer-speak and vice-versa.
Like Douglas Adams wrote:
"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#7Just wondering if this is anything more than a in-ear bluetooth headset connected to an app that uses google translate as its backend?
Because if yes, they would maybe have more success selling the app that you can use with the headphones you already own already and so making the user acquisition a bit smoother than buying a bluetooth headset...I guess more people would give less money for an app that gets updated than an headset that could potentially break...
Unless there is some technology in the headset itself so it can work on its own without the app connected to it. Didn't see anything like that mentioned here though.
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#8Now, if there were a product that would have appropriately been called babelfish, this would have been it. But no, "pilot". I guess yahoo copyrighted babelfish?
Could they trademark (it wouldn't be copyright) a term that they themselves copied from a work of fiction they don't own the copyright to, given that the context (i.e. what it does) isn't different to that in the work of fiction?
Yes - and yes, trademark, not copyright, pre-coffee conflation. Consider the Nexus line of phones, lifted directly from PKD's Do Androids Dream. Copyright is about area of applicability - I bet babelfish is trademarked for "translation services and products".
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#9I think making the device is the easy part, the hard part is doing the translation right in most of the cases, which both Google and Bing have been unable to do so far. 'Google Translate' app already has a communication mode where two people with different languages can talk, but if it worked good there was nothing preventing them to make such an earpiece.
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#10It's hard to imagine that it will work smoothly enough to be useful, at least right away, and more of an interesting gimmicky gadget. I'm looking forward to trying it regardless, assuming they succeed in releasing it (due September). edit: Slightly misleading on their website. Says "Signup on the waitlist and be entered to win a FREE pair!" When you sign-up it then says they are giving away one per month and you can…
+1 the kind of company I just don't want to deal with.