Speech Translator Technology of the Future
Though language translation software has already come a long way in
the last ten to fifteen years, it has a very promising and exciting future
in store for all of us. The ideal technology improvement is ultimately
for handheld devices which can instantly translate from one spoken language
into another. While this is still a pipedream for many reasons, it is definitely
something to aim for in the future.
While the United States Government is working with a major software development
company on technology to facilitate speech-to-speech translation for military
and government usage, for the private sector the most likely advances to
come in the shorter-term are advances in the software language translation
engines and additional language availability. As PDAs and mobile phones hold
more memory and processors become smaller and faster, it is also possible
the private sector will see more robust portable translation products in
the future, equivalent to those currently requiring a personal computer.
The Voice Translator Challenge
Unfortunately for voice recognition and translation technology,
people do not speak in the same way they write. Speech is full of
idioms, slang, and
words with multiple meanings. In addition, spoken language is not
static. Spoken language is constantly changing new words and new word meanings
are added into common speech. This makes technological translation
challenging for even the best designed translation engines.
Today it is very possible to translate spoken words into text through the
use of voice recognition software. This text file can then be translated
through language translation software; essentially making speech to written
translation possible. However, voice recognition software is not yet been
perfected and still requires a lot of personalization and patience to work
properly. Because the speech recognition text file is not ever 100% accurate,
adding language translation on top of it adds to the error rate and further
degrades the documents integrity.
In order to have true speech-to-speech translation the technology needs
to be developed which will allow for contextual understanding and contextual
translations. In addition, understanding of the emotion, and real meanings
behind a speaker’s words, can go a long way in clarifying a translation.
Right now this is only achieved through human translation.
Imagine the day where you could travel to any country in the world, set
down a small voice translator on a table, and have a conversation with people
who speak any other language. That is the ultimate goal. It will likely take
a long time to achieve, but most people in the industry believe the day will
eventually come. How exciting will that be?
Learn how you can get Speech to Text Translation Now
The good news is that you can combine a couple of software packages that
are currently on the market to help you get speech to text translation
now. By utilizing speech recognition software along with Systran translation
software you can speak into your computer's microphone, the speech
recogonition software will type out the text automatically, then you
can just click
"translate" and Systran's software will almost instantly translate
the text into the language of your choice.
Learn more about translation
software technology
See a list of translation software products. Learn more about: Text to Speech translator
|
Fast 
