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Eedoryeong
Joined: 10 Dec 2007
Location: Jeju
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 Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 6:28 am Post subject: End of the robots & of ESL? - the universal translator |
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EDIT: There's no plan yet for commercial release for smartphone. But man, I hope somebody gets on that soon...
http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/technology-1/speaking-in-tongues-the-universal-translator-is-here.html
"March 13, 2012
It's not just science fiction any more: new software from Microsoft Research works like the universal translator from 'Star Trek'. It translates your spoken words into another language, while retaining the accent, timbre and intonation of your voice.
You can watch a demonstration video right here (starting at around the 12-minute mark). The software needs about an hour to learn how you speak in order to model a digital version of your voice. Once that's done, it can translate your spoken words into 26 other languages, while still sounding like it's "you" speaking.
The system works by replacing the software's sound models, like a hard "k" sound or an "ess", with your own voice making those sounds. It then blends those pieces together in a fairly seamless imitation of your voice. The current technology still retains a computerized edge, but it does sound convincingly like the demonstrator's speaking voice, even when his digital version is speaking Mandarin and Spanish.
As Extreme Tech points out, the translation software could theoretically be part of a smart phone's software soon. This could be a boon for people travelling to foreign destinations where they don't speak the language, although it could lead to some pretty one-sided conversations. Microsoft hasn't announced any plans for a commercial rollout of the technology yet." |
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madoka
Joined: 27 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 9:39 am Post subject: |
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Here is a direct quote from a Bing (powered my Microsoft) translation of a Korean sentence regarding a mother feeding her child:
"Baby food "war" either. Bob hope buried Alda and. It's hard to serve more than feeding stuff"
No way are they even close to being something more than nonsensical gibberish. |
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GreatUnderachiever
Joined: 08 Apr 2011
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 10:23 am Post subject: |
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| madoka wrote: |
Here is a direct quote from a Bing (powered my Microsoft) translation of a Korean sentence regarding a mother feeding her child:
"Baby food "war" either. Bob hope buried Alda and. It's hard to serve more than feeding stuff"
No way are they even close to being something more than nonsensical gibberish. |
Good or we are all out of a job!!!!! |
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tfunk
Joined: 12 Aug 2006
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 3:43 pm Post subject: |
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| madoka wrote: |
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"Baby food "war" either. Bob hope buried Alda and. It's hard to serve more than feeding stuff"
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That's just an urban myth. Typical expat  |
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Leslie Cheswyck
Joined: 31 May 2003
Location: University of Western Chile
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 3:58 pm Post subject: |
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| madoka wrote: |
| Bob hope buried Alda... |
I missed that M*A*S*H episode.  |
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liveinkorea316
Joined: 20 Aug 2010
Location: South Korea
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 4:42 pm Post subject: |
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Sorry to burst your bubble OP but I'm with Madoka. The ground-breaking aspect of the technology is not the translation itself but the sound mimicing quality that lets it sound like the person who translated it.
The holy grail of a fool-proof computer translater is just that - a Holy Grail. You are better off watching Indiana Jones movies at the moment. |
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cwflaneur
Joined: 04 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 7:44 pm Post subject: |
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| liveinkorea316 wrote: |
The holy grail of a fool-proof computer translater is just that - a Holy Grail. You are better off watching Indiana Jones movies at the moment. |
Maybe... probably. On the other hand, it may just be a matter of waiting for the next exponential burst of sophistication, like the one that transformed your mobile phone into something on which you can watch a movie. That happened pretty quickly.
Language teachers, to be honest, are part of a service industry rather than a profession. As such, regardless of their talents they are a tax and a burden on the people they serve, liable to be made redundant at the earliest opportunity.
We'll see. |
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goreality
Joined: 09 Jul 2009
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 10:35 pm Post subject: |
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I can't wait for the virus that spouts out random highly offensive slang.
A: hello = ya michinam!
B: mwoya = go to hell, punk
A: Excuse me = &^%$%&^
B: %#$%@ = $%$%& I'm going to kill you.
Battle is on. |
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HANGRY
Joined: 04 Feb 2011
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 10:54 pm Post subject: |
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| cwflaneur wrote: |
| liveinkorea316 wrote: |
The holy grail of a fool-proof computer translater is just that - a Holy Grail. You are better off watching Indiana Jones movies at the moment. |
Maybe... probably. On the other hand, it may just be a matter of waiting for the next exponential burst of sophistication, like the one that transformed your mobile phone into something on which you can watch a movie. That happened pretty quickly. |
There is a pretty damn big difference between taking something where we have a big version of the technology and then making it small, and creating something that requires a fundamental understanding of our mental language system that we just don't have and THEN making technology from it.
The science just isn't there yet. Anybody who studies computational linguistics knows how far they are from creating something that can generate understandable language from spoken speech on the fly.
To create something like a universal translator would require the machine to have implicit knowledge of grammar rules of all languages, the flexibility to break those same rules in special cases, multiple semantic mappings of thousands of words, the ability to read phonetic information such as intonation or tones, and to have discourse level storage and understanding of a conversation at all times. This would all have to occur in real time as well.
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Language teachers, to be honest, are part of a service industry rather than a profession. As such, regardless of their talents they are a tax and a burden on the people they serve, liable to be made redundant at the earliest opportunity.
We'll see. |
Maybe if you took the time to understand linguistics, language acquisition, and educational psychology you would be able to understand why language education could considered a profession.
Then again, I will agree the status of a typical NET in Korea is debatable. |
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maximmm
Joined: 01 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 11:32 pm Post subject: |
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| cwflaneur wrote: |
Language teachers, to be honest, are part of a service industry rather than a profession. As such, regardless of their talents they are a tax and a burden on the people they serve, liable to be made redundant at the earliest opportunity.
We'll see. |
I completely agree. What I'm waiting for is for computer chips to be directly installed into our brains, so that math/science teachers, or people that could have better served our society serving burgers, could finally be rid of.
Teachers make me sick in general. I'm glad we're in agreement! We should form a club or something.
I do love lawyers though... professionals, hmmm, love them. Fan club, anyone?! |
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cwflaneur
Joined: 04 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:47 am Post subject: |
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| HANGRY wrote: |
There is a pretty damn big difference between taking something where we have a big version of the technology and then making it small, and creating something that requires a fundamental understanding of our mental language system that we just don't have and THEN making technology from it.
The science just isn't there yet. Anybody who studies computational linguistics knows how far they are from creating something that can generate understandable language from spoken speech on the fly.
To create something like a universal translator would require the machine to have implicit knowledge of grammar rules of all languages, the flexibility to break those same rules in special cases, multiple semantic mappings of thousands of words, the ability to read phonetic information such as intonation or tones, and to have discourse level storage and understanding of a conversation at all times. This would all have to occur in real time as well.
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Your points are well taken. To be honest, I understood this already, and my mobile phone analogy was not very well chosen. A slightly better analogy would be to the computer revolution itself, something that happened over the course of about half a century. My point is that the horizons of future technology are unforeseeable, and are often reached sooner than expected. We won't have a universal translator in this decade or the next, but it would be assuming too much to flatly deny that it could happen within one's own lifetime (unless one is already geriatric...)
I would just add that the technology would not have to be fully perfected before it starts to chew away at the market for language instruction. For instance, if our hypothetical translator were not yet practical for real-time spoken translation, but it had attained a solid reliability in the translation of the written word, then it would already be tremendously powerful. If the written translation software were to be coupled with a voice-recognition technology capable of rendering the original phrase into written text in the same language (and we're not there yet either, but not as far away - we already have captioning services in which authentic spoken input is transmitted to a third human party who revoices it monotonously into a voice recognition program that then produces highly accurate text - and all very close to real time) then we would already have an almost real-time translator. Have a good microphone on your mobile device and five seconds later, voila, words on the screen in your own language, explaining why your cab driver doesn't want to go to that neighborhood. It would be easy to see a service like this being used by tourists, business travelers, and the like.
As you said, though, we will need to have a better understanding of universal grammar before even a reliable translator of only written language would work. Once that hurdle were passed, though, the technological labour of applying that knowledge would be a comparatively easy business.
| Quote: |
Maybe if you took the time to understand linguistics, language acquisition, and educational psychology you would be able to understand why language education could considered a profession.
Then again, I will agree the status of a typical NET in Korea is debatable. |
Again, you're right, and sorry for seeming trollish there, but the broader point that I was trying to make is that for many consumers of English instruction around the world, it is an emotionally-fraught burden of time and finances that would be gladly exchanged for an alternative. As you know, there are self-motivated learners, and others who are not. I think this inherent contempt for the service is part of why the learners and employers so often view the instructors more in the light of service personnel than as professionals. For so many people, being forced to learn English is qualitatively different from studying most of the other courses required by one's major. Many academic subjects that seem peripheral to the learner's interests are nonetheless integral to the major. English, in most cases. is not. It's just an add-on, an extrinsic burden necessitated by the arbitrary forces of history and geopolitics. |
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Nismo
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
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| Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 6:16 am Post subject: |
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Hype machine, spin your wheels! Let's see how well it does with embedding in sentences like this famous gem from Trent Reznor:
"When I look at people that I would like to feel have been a mentor or an inspiring kind of archetype of what I'd love to see my career eventually be mentioned as a footnote for in the same paragraph, it would be, like, Bowie."
Even the human mind has trouble parsing that perfectly grammatical utterance, and ours was a processor naturally attuned for that very purpose. Computers are good with processing numerical data, but language is heavily based on contextual and sociolinguistic factors. The Flaming Lips may like to sing about 3000-21, but it's more fiction than science.
So, good luck computers! Or, should I say, 1100111110001010100101100001! I don't fear our field collapsing anytime soon. |
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GreatUnderachiever
Joined: 08 Apr 2011
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| Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 3:20 pm Post subject: |
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| maximmm wrote: |
| cwflaneur wrote: |
Language teachers, to be honest, are part of a service industry rather than a profession. As such, regardless of their talents they are a tax and a burden on the people they serve, liable to be made redundant at the earliest opportunity.
We'll see. |
I completely agree. What I'm waiting for is for computer chips to be directly installed into our brains, so that math/science teachers, or people that could have better served our society serving burgers, could finally be rid of.
Teachers make me sick in general. I'm glad we're in agreement! We should form a club or something.
I do love lawyers though... professionals, hmmm, love them. Fan club, anyone?! |
I don't want the chip. |
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Konglishman
Joined: 14 Sep 2007
Location: Nanjing
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| Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 3:30 pm Post subject: |
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| maximmm wrote: |
| cwflaneur wrote: |
Language teachers, to be honest, are part of a service industry rather than a profession. As such, regardless of their talents they are a tax and a burden on the people they serve, liable to be made redundant at the earliest opportunity.
We'll see. |
I completely agree. What I'm waiting for is for computer chips to be directly installed into our brains, so that math/science teachers, or people that could have better served our society serving burgers, could finally be rid of.
Teachers make me sick in general. I'm glad we're in agreement! We should form a club or something.
I do love lawyers though... professionals, hmmm, love them. Fan club, anyone?! |
Except that someone would still need to show you how to practice the scientific method and apply the knowledge. Simply knowing facts and equations is not the same as being able to do mathematics and science. Of course, I suppose that your dim view of what math/science teachers actually do for society, is simply a reflection of the downward trajectory that North American society is heading down.
People who do not respect teachers in general and how hard they work, make me sick. |
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cwflaneur
Joined: 04 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 4:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Konglishman wrote: |
| maximmm wrote: |
| cwflaneur wrote: |
Language teachers, to be honest, are part of a service industry rather than a profession. As such, regardless of their talents they are a tax and a burden on the people they serve, liable to be made redundant at the earliest opportunity.
We'll see. |
I completely agree. What I'm waiting for is for computer chips to be directly installed into our brains, so that math/science teachers, or people that could have better served our society serving burgers, could finally be rid of.
Teachers make me sick in general. I'm glad we're in agreement! We should form a club or something.
I do love lawyers though... professionals, hmmm, love them. Fan club, anyone?! |
Except that someone would still need to show you how to practice the scientific method and apply the knowledge. Simply knowing facts and equations is not the same as being able to do mathematics and science. Of course, I suppose that your dim view of what math/science teachers actually do for society, is simply a reflection of the downward trajectory that North American society is heading down.
People who do not respect teachers in general and how hard they work, make me sick. |
Speaking in maximmm's defense, I will say that people who can't use their receptive language faculties properly and read in context, even when what they're hearing or reading takes the form of blunt sarcasm, make me sicker (and waste everyone's time). |
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