Late last week in on a stage in Tainjin, China,
the Microsoft Company published a video in which a new technology of
translation is showed and explained. This technology can translate the speech of
the user into a subtitled transcription, but what is the best of this creation is the fact that it can also play an audio with the original voice of the user
speaking the second language! According to Rick Rashid, the director of investigation
of Microsoft Company, this translator isn´t perfect but it is “very promising and we may not have to wait
until the 22nd century for a usable equivalent of Star Trek´s
universal translator.”
Furthermore, the new technique used in this translator allowed the
scientists to reduce the amount of mistakes that the last translator made in a
30%, which means that if the last translator used to mistranslate 1 out of 4 or
5 words, the new one will also have 1 error but out of 7 or 8 words. The hope
is for just a few more years until technology can break down the language
barriers, then we will be able to go wherever we want only with our translator
device.
However, these new kind of devices make me think that the process in which
robots and technology will replace lots of
activities and works that humans use to do is still running to become real. Maybe,
we are not so far from that future.
Personally, I really think that this device will never be as good as human because it can´t think. And it will never be able to do it. But, I would
like to know your opinion about this. Do you think this creation will be good
for us, as teacher of English? What about people who work on translation and
interpretation?
This is the Original Star Trek Uiversal Translator:
If you want to see the device working, skip to about 7 minuutes and 30 seconds of this video...!
It would be a brand new translation device as far as I know. I have never watched that movie but, I do know how near we are to create things that, in the past, only were fictitious and just for the purpose to amuse and impress people while watching a movie.
ReplyDeleteI think this invention would be a useful tool, in terms of pronunciation, more than for how to say a word or a phrase. Because, as it is just an object, I do not think this technological device would be able to notice the speaker´s intention, when saying a particular word or maybe more complex than that, a short text or some sentences in a determined context or situation.
Unless this system was perfect in all senses, interpreters or translator should not be worried about this advanced option.
I agree with Carla that this device should not scare translators since it is just a machine as many others that try to translate sentences to other languages, but the problem with them is that they cannot express the real meaning of them since they do not interpret both the speaker intention nor the appropriate level of formality that some sceneries requires; Aspects that good translators do not miss.
DeleteI´d love that Blogs had the "Like" option! I would have liked your comments girls...
DeleteAs I said in this entry, I think that any device will be as good as a human. And thanks for adding the term "context" to my entry, because I didn´t consider it when I wrote about this device. Furthermore, as we have learnt in Language Teaching Methods 2, context is very important to have a correct understanding of language, and of course, this little machine will not be able to recognize the context of the conversations.