14.03.2012 / Technology
In your own voice
While we are waiting for Apple’s SIRI – the voice assistant of the moment – to start speaking some Italian, Microsoft certainly doesn’t seem to be waisting time.
Apparently, Microsoft Research Labs has recently has recently developed a prototype universal translator that can easily turn one language into another and back again, allowing people to carry on a conversation without even understanding each other’s language, translating between 26 languages.
Unveiled last January at Techfest by Microsoft’s chief research officer Rick Rashid, the prototype has a very unique peculiarity: it creates a model of your voice, translating your spoken words into another language while preserving the accent, timbre, and intonation.
Of course, this is not an instantaneous process. In order to attain such a high level of effectiveness, the translation system needs about an hour of training for learning the characteristics of the speaker’s individual speech. Once the training is completed, though, it can translate almost in real time.
So what about the possible applications of such a subtle technology?First of all, International phone calls: we would have the chance to speak with anyone in the world in real time, regardless of whether we share the same language – thus benefiting from a technology that Microsoft had already promised to attain years ago.
We would simply have to speak into the microphone, and the software would translate our words in real time.
A universal translator could be a very useful tool for battlefield troops in conflict zones – just think at how different things would be if foreign soldiers had the chance to communicate effectively with civilians in the most remote areas – or even for simple travellers.
That being said, we all experience on a daily basis the current limits of Google’s and Bing’s automatic translations, and sci-fi enthusiasts will have to wait a long time before they can get the perfect Star Trek-style universal translator.
Nevertheless, we must not forget that Microsoft has given birth to Kinect sensor, the market’s most futuristic video gaming platform, so chances are the IT colossus is already investing its best resources in this very project…
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