If you have ever watched or read a work of science fiction, you have probably encountered the automatic translator, a computer system which can translate from one spoken language to another automatically.
We’re now closer to this futuristic technology than ever before. This month, Google updated its translation software for Android, which includes the first debut of “Conversation Mode”, a voice recognition translator that seems like something out of a science fiction novel. , but January saw the first release of the software for users. Speakers can use their phones to translate between spoken English and Spanish. The app produces the same thing that Google Translate would produce, but now the translation engine can recognize spoken input and can create a verbal audio output. Users report that the translator can even use a speaker’s intonation to discern whether an utterance is a question or a statement. The current system may not recognize some regional varieties, but works at least passably for most English and Spanish speakers. While Spanish and English are the only languages currently available, there is apparently a version for German in the works, and many other languages will surely follow soon.
This is not the first time that Google’s text-to-speech capabilities have been used for face-to-face interactions – one example is a of a group of American women using Google’s translation services to order Indian food in Hindi. While we still have a long way to go before we get anything like Star Trek’s “”, Google’s Conversation Mode is a big step forward in language technology.
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-LBC
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