Time to get your babble on: Microsoft opens Skype Translator Preview to all comers Microsoft's Skype Translator, which automatically converts some voice calls and IMs between languages, has been available to beta testers for some time, but Redmond has now opened it up as a Preview to the general public – provided they have the right operating system. The Translator Preview software has been in circulation …
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Working in Germany and having to do a lot of translations to and from English, I am a regular user of Bing Translator (50% usable) and Google Translate (30% usable). Both are very poor - and interestingly the more formal the English, the less accurate they are! Google's biggest failing point is the word "not", it just leaves it out! "Do not" translates to the German equivalent of "do", don't translates correctly.
If Skype works similarly, then it could lead to some embarrassing problems...
"Do not shoot the hostages!"
BANG!
"Er, what just happened?"
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When I use an online translator, I cycle the paragraph back forth between English and whatever until the meaning stabilizes. It often takes three or four passes with adjustments to ensure it says what you want.
I can't imagine how unreliable 'on the fly' translation would be in comparison.
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BBC W1A got exclusive access to MS, codename 'Syncopatico' which is (supposedly*) based on Sharepoint.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01vgg1j
(Check out the on screen text translations).
All good. Yeh, no.- Cool.
(*Well it is, but it isn't.)
An added touch would have been Windows Update to appear just before the blank screen.
Trouble with automatic translation: they present only the most popular result. If you use an uncommon idiom, for dramatic effect, it is almost bound to spoil your party. You are thus reduced to newspeak just to communicate - not just a language barrier also a cultural barrier.
See the Edinburgh Prof explain it all better than me here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UVgFjJeFGY&t=26m3s
I try to avoid idiomatic language when talking to a non-native English speaker anyway in order to make understanding as easy as possible, so I don't think it's unreasonable or a hardship to do the same when dealing with translation software. More problematic with real-time translation IMO is how it copes with all the umms, ahhs, pauses, repitition, etc that normal speech is littered with.
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Not nearly as reduced as their experience will be if they can't understand what you're saying. :)
I wasn't suggesting simplifying meaning, rather simplifying vocabulary and syntax, and avoiding idiomatic speech, which is surely sensible? It's a very well understood approach in technical authoring, where writing to a given comprehension score is a requirement, for example.
I try to avoid idiomatic language when talking to a non-native English speaker anyway in order to make understanding as easy as possible, so I don't think it's unreasonable or a hardship to do the same when dealing with translation software.
Whilst that is not unreasonable when you are expecting the recipient to have to translate what it is you are saying. The real problem is taking something that the originator expected the recipient to be able to read in its original language and understand its contextual and cultural references.
Note this doesn't just apply to say English - Chinese translations, but also to say Middle English (used by Chaucer) - English. One of the interesting aspects of Wikipedia is the number of articles covering various common phrases eg. "Hoist with his own petar" Shakespear. (Yes he does use 'petar' and not 'petard').
At least it is now certain that every word you speak is processed by a computer in the path between you and others. If that Sky court case doesn't go away I may have a new name for it:
Also a pox on the abomination they made of the code. Somewhere in MS there must be a couple of highly paid UI specialists that are winning bets amongst themselves who can get the biggest abomination of a user interface signed off for production. Any UI MS has had its hands on has gone past "harder to use" into downright unpleasant.
In my experience the highly paid "specialists" will be in management of some kind, probably 4 or 5 levels removed from any of the plebs who actually cut code but with enough authority to overrule all the actual UI people. Some vaguely defined business need will have overridden any concerns about "usablilty"......
The Skype Translator Preview is only available for Windows 8.1 users, however. Microsoft says it should also work on the Windows 10 Technical Preview, but attempts to get it up and running on that operating system here in Vulture West have, so far, proved fruitless.
Maybe that was
(•_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)
Lost in translation? Awwww yeah!
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As I MAY have mentioned before, I'm trying - and failing - to improve my German. The problem with Germans is that they tend to make things up as the go along, and it's basically the linguistic version of Lego (or perhaps Sticklebricks would be more accurate). Don't have a word for summat, just stick a couple together.
This means that many compound words, whilst being perfectly meaningful to a German are completely nonsensical to an English speaker, as the can only be translated as their constituent parts which, often, bear no relation to the meaning of the whole.
But, ironically, German can also be beautifully succinct; I love the word 'übermorgen' - literally, as you can probably guess 'over morning', which is German for 'the day after tomorrow' (for those not too au fait (oops! Gone French now!) there's no specific word in German for 'tomorrow'; guess they decided, with typical German efficiency that, as tomorrow never comes, they may as well just reuse 'morgen').
I'm not interested in SPEAKING German - fuck, I'm not particularly interested in speaking ENGLISH - but I'd love to improve my comprehension (66% of the bands I listen to write partly - or wholly - in German (even many of the ones who aren't from a German-speaking country)) and writing.
Here is a lovely one that is a whole paragraph in one word: "herkömmlich".
It basically amounts to a putdown of other, similar objects, acts or events that are similar, but not quite as good. It's impossible to translate but it's a Godsend for marketing.
"übermorgen" like constructs are not just German thing. I'm quite sure any language has these (definitely east).
Add some conjugation, declension and other ways some languages obfuscate meaning of conversation and there's still some hope for privacy, for now.
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