Consider Google. For a company who started out just doing internet searches, they’ve come on in the world, ain’t they? The search business is still going strong, with Google pretty much dominating everyone else out there, and they’ve segued nicely into the world of mobile phones. Now, though, it seems that they might be taking us beyond that, into the realms of every sci-fi TV show and film, ever.
That’s because, according to The Times, they’re working on what amounts to a universal translator…
What they’re working on is speech-to-speech; we’ve seen their ability to translate text into other languages (albeit with some frequently humorous results), and the Nexus One is remarkably adept at transcribing speech into text, so logically, if you combine the two, and then make the phone able to speak, it can translate spoken English into spoken some-other-language-entirely.
The big question, though, is how well it will deal with different accents. You may remember that, ages and ages ago, I ran a blog post about the first Google voice search app, and it only seemed to work properly if one were to put on a decidedly dodgy American accent. However, they’ve had plenty of time to sort that out, and it seems the software they’re currently working on will actually get better at detecting your accent, the more you use it, as it recognises key inflections and whatnot.
And then, of course, there’s the existing translation tools Google use. We’ve all seen them at their funniest, when the translated text apparently doesn’t concern itself with actual grammar, and turns “press the accelerator pedal down” into “press down firm the pedal of acceleration”. Potentially, this could lead to some incredibly funny scenarios, when the software learns how to talk. Personally, I’m hoping for it to sound just like the translator in Mars Attacks, and then I will be a happy man. Especially if someone makes their phone say, “For dark is the suede that mows like a harvest.”
That will be the day I can die a happy man…
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