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Microsoft turns spoken English into spoken Mandarin – in the same voice

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Re: Microsoft turns spoken English into spoken Mandarin – in the same voice

#101

Post by flyinRyan »

sneak wrote: post #94
zanny wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever read 1984? A lot of linguists make arguements that our language shape the way we think and interact with the world, since at a young age we stop thinking visually and start thinking in spoken words. In 1984, newspeak was all about removing ways to describe things the Party didn't want the public thinking about, so that in several generations of the language nobody would be able to comprehend dissent. And it actu…

I am aware of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. German, for example, has no word for "silly", while English has no word for "gemütlichkeit". Eliminating the overhead is worth any of these sacrifices, though.

Your example misses the mark as "silly" can be explained in German and Gemütlichkeit can be explained in English.

Language structures our thoughts. It is claimed that Chinese are better at math because of their language structure. How you express things in a different language will help you more clearly see the concept in your own language. I learned more about English by learning German than I did in all my schooling. It improved my spelling as well because it made me understand the words I was using better.

Re: Microsoft turns spoken English into spoken Mandarin – in the same voice

#102

Post by marvin »

hnewser1 wrote: post #79
bobwaycott wrote: post #78

Damnit. This is pretty much the very idea I had in college around 12 years ago. At the time, there was nowhere near the required technology to pull this off. Over the last few months, I'd begun rethinking through the idea again, feeling the time was right to pull this off as a killer idea. Even began trying to investigate how to pitch this to create a startup focused solely on this problem. Now it seems the time may…

You are a bit naive, eh? Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_translator

Whoah, this discussion turned hostile pretty quickly.

Re: Microsoft turns spoken English into spoken Mandarin – in the same voice

#104

Post by seanmcdirmid »

dobro wrote: post #90
qq66 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there will be much of an impact on the interpreter industry until the machine translations are significantly better than human translations. Human translators are so expensive today that they are only used in situations where the translation has to be correct -- diplomacy, courtrooms, books, etc. Until a machine is much better than a human, these use cases won't switch to machine translation (similarly,…

> Human translators are so expensive today that they are only used in situations where the translation has to be correct -- diplomacy, courtrooms, books, etc. Professional translators and trained interpreters yes. But thousands of people work solely (or assume the role periodically) as interpreters and translators for many more situations, mainly revolving around business. Now, signing a business deal will still invo…

Or you know...many of the middle class Chinese that work in the offices that already speak English. Honestly, when I've walked into a Chinese office I've never had the "noone speaks English" problem, while the big boss who doesn't speak English would prefer to have one of the younger guy/gals around anyways as a sign of status.

Re: Microsoft turns spoken English into spoken Mandarin – in the same voice

#105

Post by rmah »

zanny wrote: post #88
sneak wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a broadening experience and an intellectual delight. I disagree. It's only broadening in the additional people it allows you to commune with. Other than that, it's a waste of time. Having to convert between languages (I'm a native speaker of English who lives in Germany) all the time is huge overhead, sort of like if every country had its own system of measurement, except that the overhead is incurred much m…

Ever read 1984? A lot of linguists make arguements that our language shape the way we think and interact with the world, since at a young age we stop thinking visually and start thinking in spoken words. In 1984, newspeak was all about removing ways to describe things the Party didn't want the public thinking about, so that in several generations of the language nobody would be able to comprehend dissent. And it actu…

If you're interested in how language can shape the way you think, I highly recommend watching Lera Boroditsky's talk here:

http://fora.tv/2010/10/26/Lera_Boroditsky_How_Language_Shape...

It's VERY good. But skip the first 3 minutes of boring intro.

Re: Microsoft turns spoken English into spoken Mandarin – in the same voice

#106

Post by lmm »

thejsjunky wrote: post #68
jpatokal wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you phrase that is a bit misleading. It's not that Japanese speech has any less info than most languages, it's just that you can set topics (add state to a stack, to put it in geek terms) that carry over into subsequent phrases. The correct translation of an individual sentence may thus depend on that previous context. A simple but famous case is "Watashi wa hamburger desu". The sentence has no subject, so wi…

To clarify further for those unfamiliar with the language,a super literal translation of "watashi wa hanbaga desu" is something like: (concerning/as for) myself, (it's) hamburger. On it's own if Bob says this, basically it comes out as "I (am) (a) hamburger". However, if Sally has just said something like "I'll have a salad...what about you Bob?" then it makes sense as Bob's order is the implied subject and it become…

Japanese has noticeably fewer phonemes than most languages (IIRC something like 21 compared to a "normal" 24-28) so it makes sense that there are more homophones. One interesting effect is that puns and innuendo are easier in Japanese. Of course it's easy enough to disambiguate in normal conversation.

Re: Microsoft turns spoken English into spoken Mandarin – in the same voice

#107

Post by potatolicious »

dchuk wrote: post #36
Breakthrough wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow your logic... Without those different languages, you wouldn't have anything to translate in the first place. If anything, this type of technology promotes independent and different languages, as it makes it so much easier to communicate with others regardless of your native tongue. Also, bravo to Microsoft; I'll remove my jaw from the floor after I watch your video a second time.

different languages emerged because of physical separation. As barriers have been reduced because of technology (both physical and communication barriers) there really aren't "borders" anymore. I can call someone in China right now if I wanted to, something impossible to do even just 100 years ago. So if we can all talk to each other across the world in real time, and we can all understand each other because of this…

> "So if we can all talk to each other across the world in real time, and we can all understand each other because of this technology, what exactly is the point of different languages anymore?"

A bunch of things. First and foremost: cultural representation. There are many things that are simple words in Chinese that have no English equivalent. The values and traditions of a culture are subtly communicated via its language, and even if we can instantaneously translate the literal meaning of what is being spoken, subtext will be lost.

This is why at a high level (beyond "where is the restroom") translation is a highly involved field.

Secondly is the usability of this system. Even if it is 100% accurate and immediate you'll just end up with the UN problem: communication becomes asynchronous because you need to wait for the translator. You'd say one thing, the other person would listen to your translator. He'll say something back, and you get to listen to his translator. It's a hell of a lot better than nothing, but there is still a tremendous advantage to being able to converse in real-time.

Re: Microsoft turns spoken English into spoken Mandarin – in the same voice

#108

Post by w1ntermute »

enqk wrote: post #87
thejsjunky wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reply. > This can be mostly solved by context. T Right, as I said. It's not too bad, but it's easier when you can just translate word for word. かみにいのる gives me "pray to bite" on Google translate; as you say, it suggests the right kanji...but that's precisely my point. It needs you to disambiguate for it to be sure. I'm not saying this is an insurmountable problem, I'm contrasting the difficulty. > Ther…

Also from what I understand, certain homophones are differentiated in practice by differing accenting (raising/lowering) in speech. This is however region specific.

This is known as pitch accent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent

Re: Microsoft turns spoken English into spoken Mandarin – in the same voice

#109

Post by jarek »

DanBC wrote: post #98
jarek wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what exactly is the point of different languages anymore? True. This is why I will be teaching my children Basque and Basque only. New languages might have originally emerged due to separation, but that doesn't mean lack of separation will cause already existing languages to go away.

Not Basque and Spanish? Or Basque an English? Or Basque and some Chinese language?

Nope! If we don't need different languages anymore, Basque only.

Re: Microsoft turns spoken English into spoken Mandarin – in the same voice

#110

Post by tjr »

jarek wrote: post #45
swalsh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really unfortunate though because these languages are some of the hardest for someone like myself to navigate through. For instance I can look at "poulet et riz" and figure out its roughing something chicken. But "雞肉和米飯" means nothing to me.

But does "kurczak z kaszą" mean anything?

"kaszą" looks like "kasha", but in the context of a whole arbitrary sentence (rather than in the context of talking about guessing at "chicken and rice" in other languages) I'm not sure I would have thought of that.
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