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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

#111

Post by mistermann »

chewxy wrote: post #70
FrojoS wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a GREAT talk by Geoffrey Hinton (the Prof running said lab) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DleXA5ADG78&hd=1 where he explains the method. Unfortunately, even though it was posted three times to HN http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=sex+machine... it never made the fron page. Here is the my summary and comment: " Great talk. I don't know much about artificial neural networks (ANN) and even less about…

We're too busy debating the merits of the new iDevice, or bashing people who debate the merits of the new iDevice, or wasting our upvotes on personality cults, upvoting every little thing said personality has written about. Did I about cover all the problems with groupthink and hivemind? It's a shame though, but I hang out in new a lot, and I urge other HN'ers to hang out there too.

Where might this new place you hang out be?

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

#112

Post by ColinDabritz »

qq66 wrote: post #53
tokenadult wrote: post #15

To someone who spent years learning Chinese as a second language, and then made my living for years as a Chinese-English interpreter, that was pretty impressive. The economics of the issue is that a machine interpreter just has to be as good as a human interpreter at the same cost. That's a reachable target with today's computer technology. EVERY time I've heard someone else interpreting English or Chinese into the o…

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,…

Luis von Ahn, one of the creators of reCAPTCHA, has a fascinating project going:

http://duolingo.com/

The idea is to teach people language at the same time as providing a real time translation service. Apparently if you multi-plex novices (and not at a bad rate) you get expert translation at a similar accuracy. The translators benefit by learning language, and the service is self supporting by proving translation.

He did an excellent TED talk on the subject:

http://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_c...

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

#113

Post by sp332 »

flyinRyan wrote: post #101
sneak wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 schoolin…

It's not about explanatory power, it's about patterns of thinking. Americans call each other "silly" all the time, but I'm guessing German's don't. Even though it's possible, it takes more effort, and doesn't come to mind as readily.

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

#114

Post by sp332 »

mistermann wrote: post #111
chewxy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're too busy debating the merits of the new iDevice, or bashing people who debate the merits of the new iDevice, or wasting our upvotes on personality cults, upvoting every little thing said personality has written about. Did I about cover all the problems with groupthink and hivemind? It's a shame though, but I hang out in new a lot, and I urge other HN'ers to hang out there too.

Where might this new place you hang out be?

http://news.ycombinator.com/newest

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

#115

Post by Tipzntrix »

ColinDabritz wrote: post #112
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,…

Luis von Ahn, one of the creators of reCAPTCHA, has a fascinating project going: http://duolingo.com/ The idea is to teach people language at the same time as providing a real time translation service. Apparently if you multi-plex novices (and not at a bad rate) you get expert translation at a similar accuracy. The translators benefit by learning language, and the service is self supporting by proving translation. He…

Sounds like taking on interns or co-ops. Pretty nice idea.

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

#116

Post by chewxy »

mistermann wrote: post #111
chewxy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're too busy debating the merits of the new iDevice, or bashing people who debate the merits of the new iDevice, or wasting our upvotes on personality cults, upvoting every little thing said personality has written about. Did I about cover all the problems with groupthink and hivemind? It's a shame though, but I hang out in new a lot, and I urge other HN'ers to hang out there too.

Where might this new place you hang out be?

http://news.ycombinator.com/newest

Upvote only interesting things

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

#117

Post by nandemo »

thejsjunky wrote: post #77
nandemo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 上, 神, 紙, 髪, and 加味 are all pronounced かみ. This can be mostly solved by context. There are very few situations in normal speech where you'd hear "kami" and not know if they're talking about 神 (god) or 髪 (hair). Also, it's not particularly hard to code that knowledge. E.g. try かみにいのる (pray to god) and かみのけをきった (cut hair) on Google Translate. It will suggest the correct kanji in both cases. Anyway, I'm not a native Ja…

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…

> I'm not saying this is an insurmountable problem, I'm contrasting the difficulty.

Fair enough. I'm not claiming there's no homophone ambiguity either, just that it's a relatively easier problem compared to, say, the stuff Microsoft is doing.

Yeah, when I say "normal speech" I don't include pop music lyrics.

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

#119

Post by s_henry_paulson »

hammock wrote: post #31

Putting on my tinfoil hat here, if all it takes to build a speech model to impersonate someone's voice is an hour's worth of them talking... what happens when the wrong person gets that? For example, the government or a corporation (a internet phone service, maybe) uses to fabricate evidence of conversations that never really happened; could also be used to aid in identity theft

Did you watch the video where the computer was talking?

There is no possible way to confuse that robot voice with the speaker. Technology like you suggest is a long way away from the consumer market.

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