Always imagine everyone using tech like this, slowly using their own slang, then something goes wrong, devices die, and no one understands the slang languages each person now uses.
__
Person : Babel.
Person2: Babel?
Person : Babel!!
In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
21–30 of 99 posts
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#22How good are cell phone microphones? Could I hack up a similar device with my regular headset plugged into my phone and the phone picking up the speech and translating it and reading it back to me (Google Translate)? So basically phone/app doing all the work and using whatever headphone is available. I suppose the hard parts are identifying what originates from a person and the actual speech to text and back? So far…
Doesn't seem far from what Google Translate already does; it's just a matter of automatically dictating the translation.
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#23I'd like to see more audio augmented reality systems. Translation, taking baby cry down a notch, amplifying speech directed at you, autofiguring out best moment to tell you things you might need to know.
> taking baby cry down a notch This could end badly. I think the whole purpose of babies crying is to ensure you do something about it. Not that there's always a solution, but I'd rather be awoken by a loud, irritating cry frequently than not hear them when they might need me.
Yes, but in public where I am exposed to other people's offspring that would be great. Especially when there is no escape like in planes.
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#24I'd like to see more audio augmented reality systems. Translation, taking baby cry down a notch, amplifying speech directed at you, autofiguring out best moment to tell you things you might need to know.
> taking baby cry down a notch This could end badly. I think the whole purpose of babies crying is to ensure you do something about it. Not that there's always a solution, but I'd rather be awoken by a loud, irritating cry frequently than not hear them when they might need me.
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Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#25I'd like to see more audio augmented reality systems. Translation, taking baby cry down a notch, amplifying speech directed at you, autofiguring out best moment to tell you things you might need to know.
> taking baby cry down a notch This could end badly. I think the whole purpose of babies crying is to ensure you do something about it. Not that there's always a solution, but I'd rather be awoken by a loud, irritating cry frequently than not hear them when they might need me.
You may want it if it's not your baby. Sitting next to one in a plane, for example.
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#26It'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.
Reminds me of x.ai. You sign up, they put you on a huge "waitlist" that moves slowly, and periodically remind you that you can jump big chunks of that list by spamming people about the product on social media.
Asking people to whore themselves on social media is becoming a new startup marketing strategy. I hate stuff like this.
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#27It'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."
an ambivalent perspective from Vernor Vinge, aFUtD
"Ravna had a theory (not that widely accepted, actually) that where beings have a common fluency, little else matters."
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#28I'd like to see more audio augmented reality systems. Translation, taking baby cry down a notch, amplifying speech directed at you, autofiguring out best moment to tell you things you might need to know.
> taking baby cry down a notch This could end badly. I think the whole purpose of babies crying is to ensure you do something about it. Not that there's always a solution, but I'd rather be awoken by a loud, irritating cry frequently than not hear them when they might need me.
With baby everyting can go badly. I wasn't thinking about shutting out baby cry to get some sleep (sleeping with headphones?) but rather making it little less intrusive when it screems in your face and you are sufficiently aware that it does already. Also I was thinking about capping the volume of baby cry to some level (80dB?) not reducing it propotionately.
Besides, I'm not sure how the number of babies harmed because of not crying loud enough compares to the number of babies that were hurt because they cried too loud.
Loudness of baby cries is probably delicately finetuned for other times when incentive to feed you baby had to overcome the desire to feed youself bit more.
I think modern humans have enough other incentives to keep their babies alive and healthy.
Disclaimer: I have no children. I am not significantly bothered by other people babies crying.
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 the kind of company I just don't want to deal with.
Reminds me of x.ai. You sign up, they put you on a huge "waitlist" that moves slowly, and periodically remind you that you can jump big chunks of that list by spamming people about the product on social media. Asking people to whore themselves on social media is becoming a new startup marketing strategy. I hate stuff like this.
It's not really new. Years ago before Facebook clamped down, it was pretty common practice to entice people to spam their friends list
Re: In-Ear Device That Translates Foreign Languages in Real Time
#30Always imagine everyone using tech like this, slowly using their own slang, then something goes wrong, devices die, and no one understands the slang languages each person now uses. __ Person : Babel. Person2: Babel? Person : Babel!!
To a certain extent, this is equivalent to "imagine everyone's glasses fell off and broke".
Sure, these devices are more complex and only a handful of people know how they work, but by the time they spread through an entire civilization and we adapted to be unable to communicate without them... they'd be as robust as modern day glasses and you'd have repair services in every mall.