Real-Time Automated Translation of Speech: SpeechGear Takes a Step Closer to Douglas Adams' Babel Fish

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Global Watchtower

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Posted by Donald A. DePalma on January 3, 2007 in the following blogs: Translation and Localization, Web Globalization, Business Globalization, Technology, Interpreting, Market Data, Global Marketing, Best Practices, Supplier Business Issues
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The big theme of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this year is mobility -- everybody should be able to see, hear, and converse with whoever or whatever they want while they drive, exercise, walk, or fly. Because the consumer's hands are often tied to things like a steering wheel and there's no keyboard in sight, many mobile innovations rely on voice commands for input ("call Mom," "change channels," "help!").

How about using these devices to interact with people who don't speak the same language? Everybody wants their own C3P0 (the protocol droid from Star Wars) or an earpiece translator à la Babel Fish. So language joins the mobility equation with several products available in the marketplace that rely on the intersection of machine translation, voice recognition, and lots of processing power packed into a small space:

At the CES SpeechGear introduced an interpreter for Pocket PC PDAs that translates what you say into any of 12 languages, including Arabic.

The Phraselator is a specialized but simple hand-held device that stores words and common phrases and their translations. It is currently used by the U.S. military in Iraq and by police in American cities with large non-Anglophone populations.

IBM's Multilingual Automatic Speech-to-Speech Translator (MASTOR) can handle bi-directional English Mandarin Chinese, English-to-Modern Standard Arabic, and English-to-Spanish. Not surprisingly, MASTOR is being field-tested in Iraq. IBM has also partnered with Sharp to develop a Japanese-to-English personal digital assistant (PDA).

NEC has its own PDA-based software for Japanese-Chinese communication. And for consumers who can put their fingers on the keyboard, companies like Transclick now offer real-time translation of instant messages, text messages, and e-mail.

A Treyex company developed a prototype internet-based interpreter with leading speech recognition and automated translation technologies to provide real-time interpretation for health care.

DARPA's Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE) project has as its five-year mission the goal of going where no one has gone before -- comprehensive, reliable, real-time automated translation with minimal errors.

The bottom line: These are all major steps forward, but still limited in capability and accuracy. We dont think anyone will really be satisfied with automated translation until solutions integrated with everyday objects -- phones today, a Star Trek-like communicator broach tomorrow -- offer voice-activated instantaneous interpretation of any language coming from a human, computer, phone, iPod, or devices not yet introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show.

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