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Microsoft demos instant English-Chinese translation

Seeing this development in speech technology we couldn’t help but think what will be next in the printing world:

Software that can translate spoken English into spoken Chinese almost instantly has been demonstrated by Microsoft. The software preserves intonation and cadence so the translated speech still sounds like the original speaker.

Microsoft said research breakthroughs had reduced the number of errors made by the instant translation system. It said it modelled the system on the way brains work to improve its accuracy.

In 2010, Mr Rashid, Microsoft research boss, wrote about how the Microsoft researchers were working with scientists at the University of Toronto to improve translation further using deep neural networks that learn to recognise sound in much the same way as brains do.

The improved speech recognition system was used by Mr Rashid during his demonstration of the system. First, the audio of his speech was translated into English text. Next this was converted into Chinese and the words reordered so they made sense. Finally, the Chinese characters were piped through a text-to-speech system to emerge sounding like Mr Rashid.

“Of course, there are still likely to be errors in both the English text and the translation into Chinese, and the results can sometimes be humorous,” said Mr Rashid in a blogpost. “Still, the technology has developed to be quite useful.”

Many different technology companies, including AT&T and Google, have similar projects under way that are attempting to do simultaneous translation. NTT Docomo has shown off a smartphone app that lets Japanese people call foreigners and lets both speak in their native tongue. This technology is a step towards businesses from differing nations being able to communicate even more easily. We wonder what developments will be made in the printing world over the next year!