Google Assistant Can Now Interpret 44 Languages on Smartphones (venturebeat.com) 20
Kyle Wiggers, writing for VentureBeat: In January during the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Google debuted interpreter mode, a real-time translation feature for Google Home speakers and third-party smart displays like those from JBL, Sony, LG, and Lenovo. The tech giant said at the time that interpreter mode would eventually come to mobile devices, but it didn't set a date. The date is today, as it turns out. As of this morning, Google Assistant on both Android and iOS smartphones supports interpreter mode, enabling you to ask for directions, order food, or simply chat in a foreign language. The number of recognized languages has increased from 27 to 44, and interpreter mode now lets you optionally type using a keyboard or manually select the language in which you'd like to speak. Saying a command like "Hey Google, be my German translator" or "Hey Google, help me speak Thai" kicks off interpreter mode. You'll see and hear the translated conversation on your phone, and after each translation, Google Assistant might present suggestions (like "Nien" or "Ju tut et") that let you quickly respond.
It's missing two important languages (Score:1)
Klingon and Reindeer [microsoft.com].
The headline is missing an important word. (Score:3)
Google Assistant can now interpret badly 44 languages on smartphones.
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English is incredibly good for me. The error rate is not just low but the errors it makes can mostly be ignored because they don't affect the meaning of what I said.
I'm not quite fluent in Japanese but it seems decent as well. Chinese though... My wife speaks it and often Google doesn't understand her. It seems to be device dependent too, her iPad is the worst, her iPhone a little better and my Pixel phone the best but still very far from perfect.
Seriously? No. (Score:2)
The Japanese Google translate literally jas led me nearly to a fistfight two times! Until somebody with a third language could clarify.
And Japanese to English is just completely useless.
Especially when spoken.
I stood there like an idiot, not knowing what he said, and unable to tell him that.
And German is just translated VIA English. Which multiplies the catastrophe by another orthogonal cathastrophe. For a true surround catastrophe experience!
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For Western European languages you can get away with not knowing any of the other language yourself because they are all related. With English to Japanese though you need to have some idea of Japanese really because everything about it is different, including stuff like the way things are described implying blame or the way questions are politely phrased.
For basic Q/A stuff it's fine and it's useful as a tool when you are less than fluent. My main point though was that when I speak Japanese to the phone it
Anyone else hoping for something like this? (Score:2)
I think this sketch [youtube.com] needs to be updated.
The users are happy (Score:2)
Both of them.
When they say on smartphone (Score:2)
Does it mean the Smart Phone does the translations for you. Or does it compress the audio and send it over to a big server farm to be translated then sent back as a translation.
These new Smart Phones have CPU's and specs that are being to Rival mid-tier desktops. But most of these features just send the data to the cloud. And the CPU is just used to render HTML faster.
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It sends it to the server farm. They aren't doing this to be nice.
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Actually it "tokenizes" what it thinks it hears to small bits, which then go to a "translation farm" in some outsource heaven, where each piece is translated by a "near-native" speaker of what the smartphone guessed in your language, then stitched and sent back to you.
The quality of the translation is truly amazing.
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Translation refers to written word
Interpretation refers to spoken word.
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Whatever, Mr. Anal Pedant.
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Whatever, Mr. Anal Pedant.
That ass is phat!
That ass is fat!
Words matter.
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Google Pixel 4 does interpretation locally on the phone. I think it's only for certain languages at the moment, not all. You get lower latency that way.
Having said that even the cloud based system isn't great for some languages, e.g. Chinese.
And slurp every word translated (Score:3)
For use in adverts naturally.
What? You thought that they would let you do all that translation work for free didn't you?
Re:And slurp every word translated (Score:4)
Google can't even translate text properly (Score:2)
Google falls flat on its face with languages where pronouns depend on the relationship between the speaker and listener, e.g. Korean and Viet. I can't post samples properly because of Slashdot's lack of Unicode support. Sure, it can be hard to work out from a single sentence without further context, but if you have multiple sentences you can infer which pronouns refer to the speaker and listener. However Google Translate still seems to try to translate sentences in isolation so it isn't even consistent (
Sorry, it is a horrible catastrope (Score:2)
It it uses any of their Translate tech.
I was forced to use it to communicate with a Japanese guy every few days for three months, and it was a nightmare of useless misunderstandigs. Using the speech recognition just added another circle of hell.
Sorry, ... maybe in 50-70 years when we start getting something resembling AI.