81–90 of 99 posts
I'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.
I've always thought it'd be great to have a mask/muzzle that turns a babies cry into laughing or something else more pleasant while seated next to them on the plane.
"The creator says he came up with the idea when he met a French girl." and just like that he came up with the whole concept of real time language translation, something the world has never even considered before /snark
There are multiple interpretations of a phrase like that. Choosing an obviously idiotic one leads to snarky internet comments, something we need less of on HN. Choosing the strongest one might lead you to post nothing or it might trigger a thoughtful response. Either way we get better signal/noise ratio, which is what we're hoping for here.
Sorry to sound so negative, but it seems something halfway between an April Fool and some Kickstarter "scam" (possibly in good conscience, but still). Both voice recognition and translation are HARD problems, for which even companies with tons of resources and talent like Apple and Google were able to provide only sketchy and partial solutions. No to mention issues like battery life, connectivity (hard to believe thi…
I think this type of technology is inevitable, but I think we're still 50 years away from it being ubiquitous.
Sorry to sound so negative, but it seems something halfway between an April Fool and some Kickstarter "scam" (possibly in good conscience, but still). Both voice recognition and translation are HARD problems, for which even companies with tons of resources and talent like Apple and Google were able to provide only sketchy and partial solutions. No to mention issues like battery life, connectivity (hard to believe thi…
I'm also skeptical. This is a problem where it's fairly easy to get 80% there but nearly impossible to get 100% there. Most speech recognition apps have trouble with thick accents. From there, imagine stumbling speech or people who change their thoughts in the middle of a sentence. Then there's the lag between input and output - you often can't translate a phrase or sentence until you know the whole thing and then yo…
Slovenian, for instance, has only 2,000,000 speakers. Yet there are 56 officially classified dialects. [1] They all vary in important ways, sometimes to the point that a speaker from one dialect has trouble understanding a speaker from another.
French is another language with hundreds of dialects. [2] My girlfriend is French, but when she goes to the Caribbean, she has trouble following conversation because their French is so much different than hers.
English makes for a wonderful example too. Not only does it have hundreds of dialects, there are at least 4 different Englishes. UK, US, Aussie, African-American Vernacular. They're starting to show signs of splitting into separate languages. They already have differences in vocabulary and grammar.
Then you can add slang on top of all this.
Oh and to add to all this confusion: In most European countries people learn the standardized form of their native language almost as if it was a foreign language.
I don't think we'll ever get to 100% accuracy with a tool like this. Even humans themselves can't do 100%.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_dialects#List_of_diale...
furthermore, google translate only manages the "written" finnish language... which nobody talks like. everyone uses "spoken" finnish which is not translated at all in google translate.
i wonder how many other languages have this property.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm also skeptical. This is a problem where it's fairly easy to get 80% there but nearly impossible to get 100% there. Most speech recognition apps have trouble with thick accents. From there, imagine stumbling speech or people who change their thoughts in the middle of a sentence. Then there's the lag between input and output - you often can't translate a phrase or sentence until you know the whole thing and then yo…
Nevermind thick accents. What about languages that have tens, even hundreds, of dialects? Slovenian, for instance, has only 2,000,000 speakers. Yet there are 56 officially classified dialects. [1] They all vary in important ways, sometimes to the point that a speaker from one dialect has trouble understanding a speaker from another. French is another language with hundreds of dialects. [2] My girlfriend is French, bu…
Sorry to sound so negative, but it seems something halfway between an April Fool and some Kickstarter "scam" (possibly in good conscience, but still). Both voice recognition and translation are HARD problems, for which even companies with tons of resources and talent like Apple and Google were able to provide only sketchy and partial solutions. No to mention issues like battery life, connectivity (hard to believe thi…
In real life, when you listen to a person, you do it simultaneous and, even more important, you anticipate what the other person will say. Right now machines can't do that - they even don't come near that.
Sorry to sound so negative, but it seems something halfway between an April Fool and some Kickstarter "scam" (possibly in good conscience, but still). Both voice recognition and translation are HARD problems, for which even companies with tons of resources and talent like Apple and Google were able to provide only sketchy and partial solutions. No to mention issues like battery life, connectivity (hard to believe thi…
Here's a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjXpKz0BiIU
And a publication from 2008: http://isl.anthropomatik.kit.edu/cmu-kit/861_lt2007%281%29.p...
At one point, they had an app that did live-translation. But Facebook bought the tech and took it off the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jibbigo
Today, they are riding the deep-learning wave to get ever better/faster recognition and translation. So huge improvements are to be expected.
[1] The professor, Alex Waibel, also has a chair at CMU.