MUSIC

>> Kristen Precoda: I'm Kristin Precoda. I'm the director of the speech technology and research lab at SRI International. And my laboratory works on research and development in speech technology.

MUSIC I've always loved languages and learning about different cultures, and speech technology is an exciting area to work in because everyone can relate to it. It makes an immediate impact on people's lives.

>> How can I help you?

>> How can I help you?

>>

chatter in foreign language

>> The conflict started a month ago --

>> The system that we'll demonstrate today is a spoken-language translation system between English and Iraqi Arabic. It's designed to mediate a conversation between two people who don't share each other's language. It was developed primarily for military use, so it can handle military kinds of topics as well as medical, civil affairs, general conversation. I think a technology like this can be helpful for relatively focused discussions in a variety of languages where there just isn't enough time to train enough human interpreters.

>> What are his symptoms?

>> We certainly think a lot about the Star Trek universal translator. I think that's quite a long time in the future. Over the last several years there's been enormous progress in all areas. I would say that among them are the accuracy, the speed, the coverage, the breadth of coverage and the translation quality have all improved enormously. Eventually, these could be impacting on almost anyone's life who encounters a language barrier.

MUSIC

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====

 
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  •  
    1

    pisces17001@...

    09/15/09 | Reported as spam

    RE: Is instant translation in any language now possible?

    I am very much impressed Kristin Precoda,Researcher SRI International.It seems she is very efficient,knowledgeable on language translation.I watch video Kristin has great vocabulary on daily usage of any language.She has scientific ways accurate translations.I believe she improves the system it is not a dramatically unexpected instant translation in close future.

  •  
    2

    aheram

    09/15/09 | Reported as spam

    Jayel Aheram

    Oh man. I remember testing this for NIST and DARPA back in 2007 as part of their TRANSTAC program.

    They have certainly come a long way. I am glad that they have continued with the project.

  •  
    3

    snapple27

    09/16/09 | Reported as spam

    RE: Is instant translation in any language now possible?

    That is pretty impressive technology that will most definitely be useful in the future. But don't some translating companies already have this out? I know most of them have voice translation like Translations or companies that own language software. but nonetheless, its good to see people in the world are much more conscious of the different languages out there.

  •  
    4

    tripytrev@...

    09/16/09 | Reported as spam

    Much needed

    Being someone in a school where education on language and also translation of students from over seas in project such as iEarn is needed, something like this would be extremely useful. In the field of genealogy this tool would be one of the best tools I could ever use personally. Having video's of ancestors with spoken langauges such as Dutch and other possible langauges such as Frisian, Maltese & Gealic, having a tool like this I could create english subtitles for future generations so they can understand what is being said. Something that also would be nice would be an OCR tool that can scan and read language with the old style writting. Records from say the 1500's written in italian could be translated and recorded with ease.

  •  
    5

    asdasdasdaaaa

    09/16/09 | Report as spam

    Load of bull

    Don't take this infomercial for granted.
    Speech recognition is a hard problem by itself, add to that the translation problem too and you won't get any satisfying results.
    Just look at the result babblefish, google translate etc. and imagine if they had to understand the text from your voice.

    Sure it looks well in lab environment with two people whose voice was used in the training of the system, and in a really limited context...

    Don't expect any universal text translation/recognition any day soon.

  •  
    6

    JCitizen

    09/22/09 | Report as spam

    asdasdasdaaaa thank you for you short..

    sightedness;

    I sent my Dad to Germany with a device lightyears behind what they convey in this article, and even he was impressed with the results!

    The small device could be texted into and translate to German for the tourists. Even though our family is of German origin, we have forgotten a lot! We knew this ancient device(1980s), would be vastly improved on.

    You can't compare obsolete technology like Babblefish or Alta Vista to be up to date, those free services have always been limited.

    Besides - I would want my troops to have the very best - even IF they had to use my Dad's outdated technology!

    Come on!!

  •  
    7

    rfarhan

    02/12/10 | Report as spam

    RE: Is instant translation in any language now possible?

    I am Master Student in Open University Malaysia Bahrain Branch ... I decided to make my final project in Voice Recognition and Instant Translation. And as I know that your company is the most famous company in this field therefore I need your help to achieve my goal of my project....

    Please tell me how can you help me....

    Regards
    Riyadh Al-Farhan

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