“Carnegie Mellon University researchers last week demonstrated a
breakthrough in cross lingual communication and speech-to-speech
translation in a video conference with researchers at the University
of Karlsruhe in Germany. Computer science professor Alex
Waibel delivered a domain-independent, speech-to-speech
translation in a lecture that was simultaneously translated from
English to Spanish to German.
Waibel said current systems allow translation of spontaneous
speech in limited situations, such as making hotel reservations or
tourist shopping, but they cannot enable translation of lectures,
television broadcasts, meetings or telephone conversations. The
new technology fills that gap and makes it possible to extend such
systems to other languages and lecture types. The demo also
included an array of small ultra-sound speakers that can deliver a
narrow beam of audio in a foreign language to a particular
individual, while others nearby hear the same speech in the
original language as it’s spoken without disturbance.
Waibel and his colleagues also showed delivery of speech via
heads-up display and text, a PDA-based pocket interpreter, and
simultaneous translation of videos of European Parliamentary
sessions.”
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