Google To Translate and Transcribe Conversations In Real Time (cnet.com) 28
At a press event in San Francisco today, Google announced a feature that'll let people use their phones to both transcribe and translate a conversation in real time into a language that isn't being spoken. The tool will be available for the Google Translate app in the coming months, said Bryan Lin, an engineer on the Translate team. CNET reports: Right now the feature is being tested in several languages, including Spanish, German and French. Lin said the computing will take place on Google's servers and not on people's devices. The search giant announced the tool at a press event in San Francisco, where the company showed off other artificial intelligence projects, including initiatives in health tech and touch controls for fabrics.
The search giant has also talked a lot lately about how AI should be developed in the future. Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said last week that he thinks AI should be regulated, to prevent the potential negative consequences of things like deepfakes and facial recognition. "There is no question in my mind that artificial intelligence needs to be regulated," Pichai wrote in an op-ed for the Financial Times. "It is too important not to. The only question is how to approach it." [...] At the event, Google also previewed a handful of other AI initiatives. One project is called I/O Braid, which lets people control a device by interacting with a wire. For example, you could start, stop and control the volume of music on your phone by twisting or pinching the fabric wire of the earbuds. Another project, part of Google Health, was aimed at trying to detect anemia in patients.
The search giant has also talked a lot lately about how AI should be developed in the future. Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said last week that he thinks AI should be regulated, to prevent the potential negative consequences of things like deepfakes and facial recognition. "There is no question in my mind that artificial intelligence needs to be regulated," Pichai wrote in an op-ed for the Financial Times. "It is too important not to. The only question is how to approach it." [...] At the event, Google also previewed a handful of other AI initiatives. One project is called I/O Braid, which lets people control a device by interacting with a wire. For example, you could start, stop and control the volume of music on your phone by twisting or pinching the fabric wire of the earbuds. Another project, part of Google Health, was aimed at trying to detect anemia in patients.
Uh.....what? (Score:3)
" let people use their phones to both transcribe and translate a conversation in real time into a language that isn't being spoken"
Er.....what? Into a language that isn't being spoken? Who writes this stuff?
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How else do you listen into phone calls between people who do not speak english, who is google doing this for, not for fucking you, on contract for US three letter agencies. Guess what translators you be fucked and Google be doing the fucking so they can data mine private conversations in all languages. Gees, it not like they censor people, corrupt political discoure to favour their grab for power, or routinely abuse all this stuff, until they are forced to stop and actively cheat every country citizens of
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I don't get it. Are they talking about real time translation of one language to another? We already have that. https://translator.microsoft.c... [microsoft.com] or skype has one and I thought Google already had that. So confusing. If only I would read the article then I would probably understand.
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Actually this would be screwing US three letter agencies, if anything. At the moment Google sends a lot of speech to its data centres to be processed, but lately they have been doing more processing locally on the device. It's lower latency and works offline, which is very handy when you are travelling and away from free wifi.
Not all devices support it but for example the Pixel 4 does transcription of English entirely locally. They are expanding it to other languages which makes real-time translation of con
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Except it clearly says:
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" let people use their phones to both transcribe and translate a conversation in real time into a language that isn't being spoken"
Er.....what? Into a language that isn't being spoken? Who writes this stuff?
"Translate" pertains to written language, "interpret" pertains to spoken language.
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Yesterday I helped my wife install the Google Translate app and it had no trouble translating realtime from Thai to Spanish, or English to Spanish. And neither of us were speaking Spanish.
But we had to choose a language; it couldn't translate both English and Thai into Spanish at the same time. Whenever she mixed in an English word, the translation came out wrong.
It had no trouble understanding both English and Thai in a conversation, when either English or Thai was the output language.
So this would seem to
Janglish (Score:1)
I'm a native English speaker, my wife a native Japanese speaker - we both speak each others language well.
Consequently we generally speak in so called Janglish, a mix of both which many of our similar family made up friends speak.
Good luck Google - guess they are gonna need a new algorithm.
'HIlarity' will ensue (Score:3)
Oh but Rick it'll use deep learning algorithms and 'AI' and all that good shit so it'll be better than humans can do!
Ah so in other words wars will be started over the mistranslations, gothca.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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So.... now Google will be able to see how many hookers I chatted up. Great - just what we need.
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It is what the world needs, because it makes it easier to work with people who don't speak the same language. Like in a restaurant, where there might 3 or more languages in use, and most of the people speak either one or two of them. Sometimes there is nobody in the business that speaks all three languages.
This is true in almost any "ethnic food" restaurant around the world, and in any other industry that commonly employs low-education immigrants.
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So we should deny people the ability to communicate with each other because there is a small danger that one of them might be stupid enough but also somehow important enough to create an international incident over a mistranslation?
Re: 'HIlarity' will ensue (Score:1)
The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of th
Airtel Lottery (Score:1)
You said what? (Score:2)
Google too trans. Late, and a scribe con's station is real fine.
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I spoke what you wrote into google translate, and even with the pauses in the wrong places it still got "google to translate and escribe con station is real fine."
Obviously, if you pronounce conversation as "constation" it won't understand you. You need all the syllables.
It is way better than you imply these days.
Project shutdown in .... 3 .... 2 ..... 1 (Score:3)
and we'll carry the project to the Google Graveyard of broken dreams.
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They won't, because this is one of the ones that the handset manufactures will add themselves if they do.
It would dilute their brand on Android, so they won't.
Also note that the desktop web version doesn't even have voice input. That one they could cancel at any time. But not the mobile one.
My question is... (Score:1)
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My wife's English is far from perfect, she's still in ESL classes, and it had no trouble understanding her English and translating it to Spanish.
Currently the error rate seems to be similar to a human listener.
It does fine on my bad Russian, and I only listened to the first 2 tapes of Pimsleur's Russian... 18 years ago. "No, I don't speak Russian. I'm an American. I only speak English." LOL
How about getting the thing right first? (Score:1)
This is going to be "for laughs" mostly, I fear.
Android Google Translate Can Already Do It (Score:2)
Google v2t quality has declined noticeably. (Score:1)
I suspect as the vocabulary increases, the number of possible word combinations is increasing geometrically. And it makes more bad suggestions the longer things go on. The correct words are often in the drop down list but the words google voice selects as it's first, most likely choice are becoming *ludicrously* bad.
Live Transcribe (Score:1)
I thought maybe I was a beta tester (because I do that often) but I cannot see anything on that app that says it's Beta so I think it's available for anyone on the Google Play Store.
Perhaps their plan is to incorporate this feature into the more common Google Translate app.
I'm not too impressed with it because it gets confused about who's turn it is to talk. If you say something in Spanish, it translates to English then