Google's Stunning Real-Time Voice Translation App

[powerbaselx]

Not very impressive this video from Google... there are other companies with better demos with realtime translation. I think IBM it's one of them.

 

[tayb]

That sucked. I'm completely unimpressed. Talk in plain English with little or not regional inflection and it might only take two or three tries to make it happen. Stunning? Not the word I would use. Also, the voice is ridiculous. I know it is an Android based device but can we get rid of that ridiculous Android-like voice. It sounds so stupid.

 

[loomis86]

English should be everyone's second language...except for those who have english as their first language. In that case your second language should be whatever non-english language you encounter most frequently. If everyone in the world did this there would literally be zero need for a translator.

 

[f-14]

[citation][nom]nevertell[/nom]How can english be one of the hardest languages to learn? I think that's a statement only native english speakers consider true.[/citation]
which witch is which? their there they're. tons more like that, but you get the idea. it's easier then chinese, but with chinese there's a thousand different words for 1 thing. how ever there is already 1 billion chinese which is 1/3rd of the worlds population. and there is india with another 1/3rd of the worlds population and the last 1/3rd speaks gibberish, lol.
english while difficult, is still evolving however and not as difficult as chinese.
all i know is if we convert to french we are all doomed and will revert back to wookie!

 

[tomaz99]

[citation][nom]Belardo[/nom]We need one for NAVI (Blue guys from Avatar)[/citation]

Ahh Avatar...I thought that was in reference to Jar Jar Binks

Thanks for the clarification

 

[Guest]

English definetely versatile aside, I'm Portuguese, I speak fluently English and Spanish and not so fluently French and Italian.

Portuguese is a latin origin language, and still English is the second easiest for us to learn, being Spanish the easiest (many words of Spanish are written exactly the same way in Portuguese).

My biggest problem with the languages I'm not so fluent is vocabulary so software like this could really help.

All the best,

Sharro

 

[darkxuy]

[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom] People who don't speak English are usually too young or too uncivilized for most people to even want to communicate with them.[/citation]

[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]Girls who don't speak English probably don't bathe either so... enjoy[/citation]

Ironically, you speak English but i find it difficult to imagine someone who wants to communicate with you. Specially girls.

 

[gamerk316]

Ummm...the only people who still talk "proper" english live in the scottish lowlands; "mouse" and "house" still rhyme there, as they are supposed too ("Mouse" and "House" have the same sound as "Moose", etc)

And yes, English is one of the hardest languages to learn for that very reason.

 

[theuerkorn]

[citation][nom]dragonsqrrl[/nom]I think I understand what you're trying to say, but you somehow managed to say it in a profoundly arrogant and offensive way. English may be somewhat easy to pick up, but it can be pretty difficult to master.[/citation]
Totally agree. English is relatively simplistic at first (at least for me as German), but all the exceptions become a game of memory. It's a bit like the "standard" measurement system with "easy" units like foot (due to biological reference) but with nonsensical conversions that make it harder because "someone" avoided the effort of standardization (despite the misleading name for it).

 

[swamprat]

My hovercraft is full of eels.

I will not buy this tobacconist, it is scratched.

I'm not sure on the "no easiest / hardest to learn", didn't they make Esperanto to be intentionally easy or some such? I can't say I've ever tried it.
The advantage with speaking English is that a large proportion of the 'native' speakers are so poorly educated / overly lazy / trying to be gangstas that they are barely intelligible and can't write very well at all - so anyone trying to learn it doesn't have to get very far to be quite good in comparison...

 

[Guest]

To SanPedro:

If a Japanese businessman was conducting business with anyone in and around Asia it would be in B: English.

Just as the language of business in the West is English (so that French, German, Spanish, Italian etc.. businessmen don't have to bring an entourage of interpretors with them to meetings, or spend years trying to learn 10 languages !) so to is the language of business between China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia etc.. English.

It just makes business sense. And where business leads, the world will follow.

I liked this link, mainly because it has a dig at the French

http/www.straightdope.com/columns/read/757/whats-the-international-language-of-business-french-or-english

 

[captaincharisma]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]probably the most difficult language to learn is GEEK[/citation]


got that right....

1f-u-c4n-r34d-th15-u-r34lly-n33d-t0-g37-l41d

 

[itadakimasu]

This is pretty amazing. Think about the advances this will have over the next decade...

When the US job market starts needing to speak chinese, this could save lives.

 

[Parrdacc]

English this, Spanish that. No one language is better than another or for that matter harder or easier to learn than another. It depends, as some say, with your environment. You have your native language and your secondary should be the language that you most will encounter and that depends on where you live. English is my native and Spanish second. Am I fluent in Spanish? Depends on your definition of fluent. I can speak it well, but reading and writing it, not so much. It comes down to whether or not you learn any language to speak it or to speak, write and read it. To learn a language just to converse is fairly simple. Most people I know who have English as their secondary, mainly spanish as their native, say speaking it and understanding the spoken English is easy, but the problem comes in writing and reading it.

 

[liveonc]

Those Japanese robots are starting to look realistic! If they made one that looks like Stephen Hawking, it could fool anyone. BTW, his robot can use Google Voice Translation & a Japanese guy can be him... ;-)

 

[razzb3d]

[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]How about everybody stops messing around and learns to speak English? I speak three foreign languages fluently but English is the only one I ever needed. It's really easy to learn, it's very versatile, it's already a de facto standard so there's no need for silly devices to communicate with non English speaking savages.[/citation]

Thumbs up. I fully agree with you. I'm Romanian, and speak english and a little spanish but english is the language I use most. Ffs, every proper electronic and IT gadget is in english... all good movies are in english... GET WITH THE TIMES PEOPLE!!

 

[thebigt42]

But can you stick it in your ear

 

[dgingeri]

as far as english being the easiest to learn and most versatile, I'd have to put in that the technology for computers could never have come from certain language groups. We'd never have seen the concept develop from China or Japan because there simply wouldn't be any room to build a usable keyboard. There are just too many characters in those written languages. They might have developed machines that did certain calculations, but they'd never create anything as versatile as our current computer technology. Most asian languages are in the same boat. the current, English developed computer have had to be adapted to those languages, but they don't really work all that well.

Granted, it could have come from most countries in Europe (considering they have almost the same alphabet) but English speakers came up with the technology that has become the most widespread.

This has made English the most common language in the computer world, and by extension the business world. Trading and profit are the biggest motivators for doing anything. English has now become the most common language for doing business, even between countries where neither are native English speakers. Most of the business done between China and India is done speaking nothing but English.

It's really not a matter of which is easiest or best. (The same goes for computer technology in general.) It's what the most people have chosen to adopt for a very extensive list of reasons. Xerox was the first company to come up with a graphical user interface, and Mac may have even had the best in the beginning or even now, and Linux might even have the most flexible and adaptable, but it was Windows that became the most widely used. That's all there is to it.

 

[truerock]

Esperanto did not work as a universal language. I think the solution is a universal standard English language version based on a vocabulary of around 2,000 words with a very strict limitation on grammar, spelling and perhaps a few key eliminations of some odd English language artifacts.

 

[Guest]

Lo mejor que puedes hacer, Killerclick, es quedarte con tu Inglés en tu zulo, y con suerte no te pegarán por la calle, estúpido ignorante.