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2011-02-21 Home Front: WoT
US military wants a universal translator
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Posted by gorb 2011-02-21 15:50|| || Front Page|| [11132 views ]  Top

#1 Paging Captain Kirk to the white courtesy phone universal translator.
Posted by Procopius2k 2011-02-21 17:07||   2011-02-21 17:07|| Front Page Top

#2 Oddly enough, real experts on the subject can, or at least could, be found at Dragon company, now Nuance, which makes the Dragon Naturally Speaking software, voice to text.

For years, the company was neck and neck with IBM in voice to text software, and eventually they produced a superior product, that could adapt to accents with minimal training. Except for one.

For some reason, a Scottish accent was just impenetrable. Just about any other English language accent, and there are a lot of them, they could handle.

But as far as translation goes, accents are the key, both to figure out languages and dialects.
Posted by  Anonymoose 2011-02-21 18:24||   2011-02-21 18:24|| Front Page Top

#3 the real test is can it translate Mendiola?
Posted by Frank G 2011-02-21 18:26||   2011-02-21 18:26|| Front Page Top

#4 Speech - text is important, but not the only requirement here. The goal is accurate recognition and translation of meaning, to be delivered in small equipment carried by a soldier.
Posted by lotp 2011-02-21 19:16||   2011-02-21 19:16|| Front Page Top

#5 LOL Frank! A snark of the day!

There is a way to create an universal translator that would do a decent job (accents and voice are another story) at syntax and grammar. All the languages are based on a binary logic. Aymara is the only one based on trinary logic. If you create logic gates based on Aymara, you get the essential layer by which you can map all the other languages. It has been already done, but the lady that did it was unwilling to depart with the algorithms, for use by mil/intel that become very interested. I guess that military needed another 8 years or so to mimic the functionality.

A note: Despite Aymara being a superior language tool, it does not follow that the speakers have more brain power or become smarter. Point in case--Evo Morales.
Posted by twobyfour 2011-02-21 19:32||   2011-02-21 19:32|| Front Page Top

#6 Google Translate http://translate.google.com/?hl=en&tab=wT# does a pretty good job of detecting what language you are typing and then translates to English.

Try this at the link: Boa Noite

Should tell you it is Portuguese and then translate it to English. (Means "Good night".)
Posted by Ebbaiter Poodle4718 2011-02-21 21:50||   2011-02-21 21:50|| Front Page Top

#7 Darmak and Jalad, at Tanagra.
Posted by swksvolFF 2011-02-21 22:04||   2011-02-21 22:04|| Front Page Top

#8 It's all Gilgamesh to me.
Posted by Procopius2k 2011-02-21 22:25||   2011-02-21 22:25|| Front Page Top

#9 If people would just speak English like everyone else...
Posted by SteveS 2011-02-21 23:42||   2011-02-21 23:42|| Front Page Top

23:58 USN,Ret
23:42 SteveS
23:08 badanov
22:43 JosephMendiola
22:39 Procopius2k
22:38 Barbara Skolaut
22:37 Procopius2k
22:34 Procopius2k
22:31 Pappy
22:29 crosspatch
22:26 Pappy
22:25 Procopius2k
22:22 JosephMendiola
22:04 swksvolFF
22:02 JosephMendiola
21:58 Jack Salami
21:56 Bright Pebbles
21:55 Ebbaiter Poodle4718
21:50 Ebbaiter Poodle4718
21:46 M. Murcek
21:44 JosephMendiola
21:41 OldSpook
21:39 rwv
21:38 JosephMendiola









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