Google working on voice translator phone, redefining synergy
By Vlad Savov 
posted Feb 8th 2010 10:13AM
posted Feb 8th 2010 10:13AM
Okay, so Google has this expansive online translation service, which we all know, use, and sometimes even love. Google also has its own branded phone, with a voice recognition function that we frankly adore. So what's a brave new age company with bottomless pockets to do but try to splice the two together into some kind of omnilingual instant translator? Speech-to-speech translation -- long the exclusive plaything of fanciful sci-fi writers -- is said by Franz Och, Google's head of translation services, to be a viable possibility within a measly couple of years. The Mountain View approach to overcoming the inherent problems of variable pitch, tone and accents in speech will be to use each person's phone to accrue data on his or her linguistic idiosyncrasies, so that the more the phone's voice recognition is used, the more accurate it becomes. Sounds tres bien to us.
But would it impress a French girl?
@Bosco In engineering school, I built a translator that stored an array of words in English and French and used a straight up mapping table on the processor to match them. It was crude and unscalable but it sure as hell impressed girls.
@misalies
Man it looks weird to see the words "engineering school" and "girls" in the same paragraph
@Alexicov
I have to walk over to the college of business once in a while to remind myself that girls still exist
@Bosco
Google don't even had voice translator in their web version, but if they manage to has it I would definite get a Android cause Iphone doesn't had good voice translator it usually cost arm and leg for a decent translator.
@Alexicov
Statement so true, it hurts.
@blueskyv201
im in engineering also, oddly i turned to the person next to me just now and she's a girl...
@blueskyv201
im not trying to boast i just thought it would be a funny comment
@joshky
But how many branches did she hit as she fell out of the ugly tree?
@Alexicov ha ha i didn't notice that
@Bosco Je Taime! Finally, N1 is embracing foreign language adaptation for their voice-recog. I love this one. For sure, the disadvantages of nexus is now starting to diminish. Details: http://bit.ly/nexus-one-disadvantages-compiled
That's tight. Google is a really innovative company.
THEY ARE JUST DOING IT TO LISTEN IN ON YOU!!!
break out the tinfoil hats!
@John Stathakis Would you say the same for IBM? They already have their service done and instant translation for a multitude of languages for internal conference calls.
@John Stathakis Already been done by a company called Jibbigo http://www.jibbigo.com/website/index.php
And yes, they even have an app for that.
@FabianG20 Tinfoil will not help you here, this isn't mind reading we're dealing with here... yet...
@John Stathakis
They are giving so much away for free which is great!
Agreed, the GV translation service is terrible...however one would think that they would do a better job for their mobiles than some free service that is open to anyone...BTW the "even love" link in the article takes you to some camera article...What does that have to do with translation and\or Google?
@DoctarPeppar
In the article, Engadget made a link to the source (which was in japanese) via the google translation service.
@Hosermage
Ohh I see!
@DoctarPeppar GV does produce some weird results, but that is more due to the fact taht most people leave message for it while standing next to a loud road and mumbling. If you make basic efforts to speak clearly when you use the Speech-to-text integration in the rest of the OS the recognition is actually nearly perfect.
That would frickin rock, go head Google.
Poor voice recognition plus poor translation? I hope no one actually decides to rely on this.
@mr nimblewick
You must be thinking of a voice recognition app for your iphone. The voice to text service for the Nexus One is about as close to perfect as you could ask for.
@wraith404 VR sucks on the Nexus one. Have you tried dragon dictation for the iphone? Now that is an AMAZING VR app.
@wraith404
My comment wasn't to put down the N1 or promote the iphone. I do not own either. I just know from various usages that translation apps tend be very poor, and relying on them overseas could lead to an international incident.
Hmm...based on how well Google Voice's translator works at the moment, I'm sure translating "hello" in Chinese would end up something along the lines of "Go F*ck Yoself."
By the way you can talk to Google Translate on N1 using its speech recognition, it translates it and in turn uses Text-to-speech to say aloud the translation in different languages. Have used it as a novelty so far and accuracy no amazing.
This project makes sense though since even if people don't use the full speech-to-speech, improving the two individual parts (voice-to-text and text-to-voice) would help improve many other different applications.
what the hell? Why was my comment deleted?
All i said was GV translation SUCKS.
Hello != HXsaxxaaxzczxc
and that they should do some real phonetic searching. ie what nexidia et al do.
@ipxnsv
Engadget is like the gestapo now when it comes to comments, LOL.
@DoctarPeppar
Ssssssshhhhh or they might hear you! *shifty eyes*
@ipxnsv
Comments complaining about deletions should be automatically deleted.
Issues with Engadget moderation shouldn't be hashed out in public. Take it up directly with the editors.
@ipxnsv
agreed with you there.
as soon as your dictation diverges even slightly from teh perfect "queen's english" none of these tools manages.
here in US, working with indians, french, south and latin american, the accuracy of one sentence, the same by everyone, of no more than 7 words (including articles) was so bad , not once was it even close to spot the correct speach to text.
tried with a few guys from louisiana and from texas: a bit better a result.
tried with the google search app, and the dragon dictate app.
tried also dragon dictate on the PC: no better, cannot even finish the training, it stucks at a few words and there is no articulation attempt that gets it through, unless a full diction re-learning.
once they fix that , or allow you to train the tool, but 100% of it, then it might be usefull, 'til then : pipe dream.
and that is speach to text, not mentionning speach to speach translation in different languages, with the different accents in each one
Sure you will impress the French girl, and live happily in world riddled with by Google's aesthetic and moral standards, real-time censorship included... Let's welcome this fresh metastasis :)
Given that it's Google, I suspect that logging the user's speech foibles will help the recognition in everyone else's handsets, too. For better or worse, they tend to crowdsource data via their Privacy Policy. (I'm fairly confident that they use GPS-and-wifi phones to gather data for Google Maps' wi-fi positioning network, so long as the app is running, for example. I can get wi-fi-only locks pretty much anywhere I've visited with Maps open.)
Good stuff! I hope they pull it off.
On the surface this is pretty damn cool and rather impressive, but my guess is that the reality is going to be a far, far cry from some universal translator from Star Trek that some people might be thinking this might be like.
This is the part where it becomes self-aware. ::scared::
@crawdad689 That's the impression that I got. Skynet is learning to speak Human so it can kill you more effectively
Not sure why people are saying that the voice translation is terrible. It actually works very well. I am amazed how well it works at times. It also increases in accuracy over time as you us it.
Don't be jealous people, Google will make this available for everyone eventually.
@spacecake
not only will they make it available for everyone. They'll make it available FOR FREE.
@spacecake Given that humans have issues with my accent (I'm English, live in the US), I have no hope for Google's robuts. :D
@crawdad689
You don't understand the Google business model, do you?
NOTHING is free. Tracking, sorting and analyzing your search and surfing data and then targeting you with specific ads is not what I call "free".
Just because you aren't paying a dollar amount for a piece of software or service does not mean it is even remotely free... there are other ways to pay the Piper.
@Hazdaz
Turn off cookies, problem solved.
@spacecake
mhmmm cookies...
@Hazdaz
I understand how it works perfectly.
We differ. I consider it free, because no money is coming out of my pockets.
We also differ because I actually PREFER targeted advertisements to advertisements that I will have absolutely no interest in, and I don't buy into the whole "zomg they're harvesting my anonymous data" argument.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
@crawdad689 Agree with most of what you say. And I was always more worried about M$ business-model, especially 5-10 years ago, than I am about Google's and M$ which in some well-know cases wielded, or tried to wield, their power much more malevolently while charging us a pretty penny to accept worse terms over time.
Also, I'd consider it free the way other things are considered free such as radio, OTA tv, and I could come up with similar or diverging cases. Now, they don't have the same "data mining" but they are free, and actually worse in their cost, these take up our spectrum which is an opportunity cost that will only grow overtime. Meanwhile, we have alternatives, so they are costing me future innovation while not giving me a better product.
You'd be surprised. I think the next 5 years will represent major headway in this field. It's already at the "almost good enough" stage. Toss in some algorhythms that can learn an individual's vocal nuances over time, and we're really almost there.
This message I have deliberately translated by Google Translate from its native language into English. Success will have if you understand anything at all, I doubt that this would be a useful thing to discuss in person. Moreover, neither the speech recognition does not work right.
As you can see above Google Translate is not ready yet.
@(Unverified) hey I'd rather have that than nothing. Im all for learning other languages, I speak spanish (native) and english and am learning german, but some languages (slavic ones, finnish, etc, or any middle eastern and asian languages) are very complicated and I have no idea how to speak any of them. I guess it would be useful on trips to many countries with different languages where it wouldnt be practical to have dictionaries.