Real time spoken language translator
- Thread starter MatteH Oxford
- Start date
In-ear automatic translation device looks interesting
It's early days and information is lacking, but it looks like it might be real. It's not a Universal Translator/Babelfish, but it would be quite radical if it does work.
The guts of the claim is that the company has developed automated translation software advanced and efficient enough for a high-end phone to be able to translate natural speech in close to realtime. It's the earpieces that are attracting attention, but they're just wireless earpieces. Nothing new there. It's the software that's the important part.
I'm sceptical but interested. I don't know enough about the subject to properly judge how plausible it is, but I'm thinking that it's possible that it mostly works to an extent that would be usable in many circumstances if it became common enough (it requires both speakers to be wearing a compatible earpiece, so to talk with someone they'd have to either already be using the system or agree to wear one of your earpieces.) The video doesn't show sci-fi plot device levels of perfection, like Star Trek or Hitchhiker's. The translated speech sounds somewhat artificial and the translation is slightly flawed ("How you do it?" instead of "How do you do it?"), which is what I'd expect from a best case scenario in automatic translation.
The company is called Waverly Labs and the app/earpiece is called Pilot.
I'll put the promo video here and hope it doesn't get moved into the Youtube thread because it's not about the video.
It's early days and information is lacking, but it looks like it might be real. It's not a Universal Translator/Babelfish, but it would be quite radical if it does work.
The guts of the claim is that the company has developed automated translation software advanced and efficient enough for a high-end phone to be able to translate natural speech in close to realtime. It's the earpieces that are attracting attention, but they're just wireless earpieces. Nothing new there. It's the software that's the important part.
I'm sceptical but interested. I don't know enough about the subject to properly judge how plausible it is, but I'm thinking that it's possible that it mostly works to an extent that would be usable in many circumstances if it became common enough (it requires both speakers to be wearing a compatible earpiece, so to talk with someone they'd have to either already be using the system or agree to wear one of your earpieces.) The video doesn't show sci-fi plot device levels of perfection, like Star Trek or Hitchhiker's. The translated speech sounds somewhat artificial and the translation is slightly flawed ("How you do it?" instead of "How do you do it?"), which is what I'd expect from a best case scenario in automatic translation.
The company is called Waverly Labs and the app/earpiece is called Pilot.
I'll put the promo video here and hope it doesn't get moved into the Youtube thread because it's not about the video.
I think either the BBC news channel program Click or Travel Show had something very similar on a few weeks back (given a real world test), and from memory they were pretty impressed, but it still required a mobile/internet connection as it relied quite heavily on "cloud" computing to do the heavy work and had occasional issues.
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Here's a clip from it.
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Here's a clip from it.
I think Angilion summed it up perfectly for me with "I'm sceptical but interested".
My view is that it's coming, and I'm very interested indeed when it does. I'll go so far as to say I'll be an early adopter, but only when it works well. I mean, works well enough to be reliable as a business tool, and for multiple languages. French alone doesn't interest me, as I'm fluent enough to get get by. Italian, too. But add Chinese, even Japanese? Then, sign me up.
I'm very sceptical that we're anywhere nead that yet. My guess would be it's some years off.
My view is that it's coming, and I'm very interested indeed when it does. I'll go so far as to say I'll be an early adopter, but only when it works well. I mean, works well enough to be reliable as a business tool, and for multiple languages. French alone doesn't interest me, as I'm fluent enough to get get by. Italian, too. But add Chinese, even Japanese? Then, sign me up.
I'm very sceptical that we're anywhere nead that yet. My guess would be it's some years off.
Very similar...but the claim is that this does the whole job on a phone and doesn't require a mobile/internet connection.
It grates on me to call them phones. A handheld computer that isn't designed as a phone, isn't usually used as a phone and works quite badly as a phone isn't a phone. It's like calling a screwdriver a hammer.
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This has already been posted. Use the search function in future 
This has already been posted. Use the search function in future
I did, of course, use the search function. For every forum and every child forum and using relevant terms. Your claimed supernatural ability to be able to see what people have been doing is, thankfully, not true.
