Speak It in Chinese, Hear It in English - Newsweek article

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Speak It in Chinese, Hear It in English

By Benjamin Sutherland

Newsweek International

 

March 13, 2006 issue - Alex Waibel doesn't understand Chinese, but he

can read street signs when in Beijing. A team of engineers led by

Waibel at Germany's Karlsruhe University has developed a heldheld

device called the Sign Translator. It uses an integrated camera and

software that recognizes, and translates into English, about 3,000

Chinese characters.

 

The Sign Translator is the cutting edge of a raft of breakthrough

developments in translation technology coming down the pipeline.

Governments in Europe, rather than corporations, are driving much of

the innovation†" and with good reason. Consider the European Union: in

Brussels, the world's largest translation and interpretation operation

spends more than $875 million a year ferrying information in and out

of the bloc's 21 official languages.

 

A three-year EU project called TC-STAR is pumping €10 million into

language-software R & D. One grantee, Germany's Siemens, has developed

software that recognizes spoken words, transcribes them, translates

the transcription and then utters the translation by patching together

syllables pre-recorded by native speakers in several languages.

Siemens's Lecture Translator System will be installed first in the

European Parliament, probably within two years. This system and others

promise to slash the cost of the European Commission's commitment to

multilingualism†" and undercut calls to make English the European

bureaucracy's sole working language.

 

DaimlerChrysler, another grantee, is perfecting an antidote to those

goofy-looking headphones on display in places like the United Nations.

Its ceiling-mounted " audio-beam " speakers can shoot a cone of sound

five meters to areas as small as a single seat. Bernard Smith, head of

the Luxembourg-based TC-STAR program, jokes that the innovation is

" psychologically disturbing " because a listener squeezing down a row

of seats for a bathroom visit will be assaulted by a series of sound

cones delivering different languages. Alternately, the Lecture

Translation System will also provide wireless subtitle goggles for

parliamentarians who prefer to read speeches.

 

EU cash is also helping companies like Nokia, which is developing

cell-phone software that translates and utters, in real time, dialogue

in English and Chinese. Because the software transcribes what it

translates, it also creates a written record of conversations, the

better for e-mailing. Imre Kiss, an engineer at Nokia's lab in

Tamteri, Finland, says " push from our customers " will likely translate

into rollouts within two years.

 

Across the pond, NASA's Neuro-Engineering Laboratory, or NEL, is

trying to bypass speech itself. The Mountain View, California-based

lab is developing button-size electrodes that stick to the throat. By

analyzing small electrical currents, the electrodes decipher words

that are mouthed†" but not pronounced. These " subvocal " words can then

be delivered as written text, a written translation or strung together

as speech with pre-recorded syllables. The prospect of selling phone

calls that can't be overheard has made telecom companies prick up

their ears. Two majors are in talks with the NEL, while Nokia runs its

own program. The EU is devoting funds to similar research.

 

Humans are still better at translation than machines†" people can at

least crack (and understand) a joke. But at least machines are rapidly

making the world more comprehensible.

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

 

© 2006 MSNBC.com

 

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