Will IBM power Speech-to-Speech Translation on iPhone?

Feb 15

Machine Translation, Miscellaneous, Translation Software

One of last week’s biggest news items in the tech world was Google’s plan to work on speech-to-speech translation for Android. This item was covered by hundreds of newspapers as well as by all the major blogs. The story was retweeted thousands of times on Twitter.

speech-to-speech translator

Apple’s reaction to this news? Silence. Which is a bit strange since Apple could lose its leadership in the cellphone market with such a technological breakthrough by Google. Could Apple be hiding something up its sleeve? Could Apple roll out a speech-to-speech translator for iPhone sooner than Google, who projected that the product will be ready in two years? The answer is YES, if IBM helps them get there.

In fact, the more you think about it the more this makes sense. IBM can provide Apple with the technology to power its smartphone with speech-to-speech translation. Will Apple and IBM collaborate? Why not. Here are some facts that lend credence to this possibility.

IBM has been working on translation software and machine translation for years. In fact, they invented the SMT (Statistical Machine Translation) technology that Google Translate is using. IBM has had commercial MT offerings for years.
IBM has embarked on a massive project to perfect its machine translation system. This project, called n.Fluent, was covered in a previous GTS blog post. And IBM has made it no secret that their translation software will compete with Google Translate, they even posted it on their website (click here to read it).
IBM has a huge R&D team that is working on speech-to-speech translation (click here to read about one of these projects at IBM). They may be way ahead of Google. And IBM has many patents in the area of speech recognition.
IBM and Apple are already working closely and have announced that some IBM Lotus applications will run on the iPhone and iPad (click here to read more) . So why not an iPhone speech-to-speech translator too?

An iPhone speech translator powered by IBM technology. Fact or fiction? What do you think? Would you like to use your iPhone as a speech translator? It may be ready sooner than you think. If we make out voices heard, Steve Jobs and the Apple crew may respond.

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Comments

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February 15th, 2010 at 12:01 PM

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February 16th, 2010 at 8:39 AM

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Brian Barker

February 17th, 2010 at 12:37 PM

Google’s “Babel Fish” translator will in never solve the language problem. Not only does it discriminate against anyone who cannot afford a mobile phone, but against minority language groups as well.

There are 6,800 languages worldwide, not fifty-two !

Moreover, if I met a native in Borneo, and he said to me in Hakka “I’ve lost my mobile phone” how would I understand him And how many starving Africans can afford a mobile phone !

As English loses its economic power, the answer is not for us to move to Mandarin Chinese, but to Esperanto which puts all speakers on an equal footing.

Have a look at http://www.lernu.net or http://www.esperanto.net
Dave

February 17th, 2010 at 2:25 PM

Thanks Brian, I appreciate your passion about Esperanto. If you will, I would be happy to publish a guest post on GTS Blog about Esperanto or any other topic you would like to write about. Please contact me if this is of interest to you and we can make it happen. Best, Dave
Bernardo_Verda

February 18th, 2010 at 1:35 AM

Technological solutions to non-technical problems.

This sounds to me like another case of trying to implement a technological solution to a non-technical problem. Is this really the answer? Or even a good answer? It’s worth asking whether this is really the right approach.

How well is this going to work trying to chat up a girl (or guy) in a foreign bar, on a foreign beach or on the bus?

How well is this going to work to negotiate an informal agreement, say, by striking a deal in the corridor, or mutually feeling out one’s opposite number around the coffee-service?

And how sure can you really be that the technology has conveyed the meaning — let alone connotation and nuance — you wanted to get across?

I think I’d rather stick with the current standard — broken English. And we see how inadequate that is, more than often enough!

It should also be considered how well this is — or isn’t — going to allow for privacy, in a world where e-mail is already routinely scanned and indexed by both commercial and government entities (including Google itself, and the US and the Chinese governments, just for starters)? Would you trust this system when negotiating an important business deal, consulting on legal matters, etc?

Perhaps something like Esperanto (which has been around for well over a century, and shown to work quite well in practice) deserves fresh look. It might not promise to be quite as “effortless” as some shiney techno-magical solution, but it would probably work better in real life.
Dave

February 18th, 2010 at 1:43 AM

Thanks Bernardo, you raise some interesting points. I agree that technology will never be able to replace human interaction. And you are correct that depending heavily on electronic communication creates personal privacy concerns.
Muhammad Riaz-5032

February 18th, 2010 at 11:25 PM

This collaboration has great potential for Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Hindi and other languages.

http://www.translation.pk
Regards,
Muhammad Riaz-5032
Andrew Bredenkamp

February 21st, 2010 at 5:56 AM

Nice thought – but I am not sure how realistic speech-to-speech translation is for the moment. Voice-based search is *just about* useable, but at the complications of MT on the back of it and it becomes hard to make it work reliably.

A point of information, IBM didn’t invent the SMT technology that Google is using. It was mainly developed by Franz Josef Och (a Google employee) and colleagues, based on his work with research groups at Cologne University in Germany and ISI @ USC.
Dave

February 21st, 2010 at 9:15 AM

Thanks Andrew, regarding your correction as to the origination of SMT: Wikipedia says that IBM was the inventor of modern-day SMT; please see the link here on http://bit.ly/4q8rL. I know that Google’s Franz Josef Och is considered to be one of the top people in the field but if he is indeed the inventor of SMT then I suggest you contact Wikipedia so they can update their page.

I tend to agree with you that reliable speech-to-speech translation does not seem that realistic. But Google (and Franz Josef Och by association) said that they would have speech-to-speech translation ready in two years. What I wanted to say is that if they can do it, Apple and IBM can possibly do it sooner and better.

Best, David
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March 2nd, 2010 at 1:56 PM

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