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Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

digitaltrends.com

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Re: Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

#32

Post by anigbrowl »

AshleysBrain wrote: post #4

Do dolphins have anything interesting to say?

If we establish two-way communication (a big if, given the over-promising that goes on with technology), they could probably share a lot of useful information on the condition of the marine environment and fish stocks, with considerable mutual benefit. Then again, if the the quality of the oceanic ecosystems has plunged as much as we suspect, they might be pretty pissed off with us.

Re: Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

#33

Post by philwelch »

bh42222 wrote: post #19
pasbesoin wrote: post #12

Did anyone see the recently circulating video of the cat on the dock interacting with dolphins. Including repeated and extended nuzzling and no signs of aggression. I immediate thought that, in part, the dolphins might be attracted by, intrigued by the cat's probably purring, sensing it through their jaws. But there seems to be a patience and curiosity there that speaks to significantly more than mere "animal instinc…

What will they say when we finally understand them? "Took you long enough." I don't believe that communication between dolphins and trainers has been strictly one way. I'm pretty sure a trainer can easily read a lot from a dolphin's actions, sounds, etc. And keep in mind, the other great apes are wicked smart, like smarter then small human children smart, way smarter then the smartest dog, but still not smart enough…

What they did say was more like this: http://www.koko.org/world/talk_aol.html

Re: Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

#36

Post by stan_rogers »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #21
lars wrote: post #7

From a machine learning perspective this doesn't seem like such a daunting task. We have pretty good speech recognition for human language (plus acceptable speech synthesis). Assuming dolphins have a smaller vocabulary than humans, speech recognition of dolphins should strictly speaking be a simpler problem (although it would be significantly harder to record the training data).

Of if dolphins have a sense of humor all bets are off. Dophin 1, "Hey I bet we can get that thing to say 'bite me' when it greets someone!" Dolphin 2, "You think? Ok, every time we meet in front of them you say 'bite me' and i'll say 'wheree?'"

Oh, I'm sure there would be a few unfortunate "drop your panties, Sir William; I cannot wait until lunchtime" incidents, but with an automated Hungarian Phrasebook[1], we'll eventually learn to get by.

More to the point, though, we have no reason to assume that dolphins, any more than, say, apes, have the ability to "chat" -- to communicate about things displaced from the here and now. It's worth a go, of course, but our expectations shouldn't be too high going in.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6D1YI-41ao

Re: Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

#37

Post by theklub »

pasbesoin wrote: post #12

Did anyone see the recently circulating video of the cat on the dock interacting with dolphins. Including repeated and extended nuzzling and no signs of aggression. I immediate thought that, in part, the dolphins might be attracted by, intrigued by the cat's probably purring, sensing it through their jaws. But there seems to be a patience and curiosity there that speaks to significantly more than mere "animal instinc…

Just want to mention that I just watched "The Cove" last night and it was really well done doc. (About Dolphins being mass slaughtered in Japan). Just watch it, its on netflix instant.
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