Interpreters Headphones

Yes, if the headphones are hooked to the proper computer with the proper language interpretation software.

Good luck.

Handheld translating devices are commercially available for various languages. Obviously, only for the simple task getting around in the other language, without learning it. Limited use. Simultanious translation, as you hinted at is the very highest skill, very well paid to, for a good reason. Computers are good for menial tasks, beyond that is iffy. IBM built a computer system for database application, that can handle normal speech pattern and idioms. To demonstrate its capabilities for later commercial applications, they let it win a TV show game Ieopardy, where double meaning and slang is frequently used. IBM spent a large fraction of $1000million on it. Not exactly student level exercise.

News to me. This Microsoft app works pretty well.

This has been thought about at least since the 1970's , but progress to something useful is still slow.

wonderful Idea.. only 35 years to late..

Gene Roddenberry had one in 1966!!

Not sure of the date, but so did Douglas Adams...and his lives on in internet form....

Don't forget the Babel Fish in "The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy".

BAB

Had you followed the link (or even hovered over it) you would have seen that's what I was talking about.

Or did you not know that Douglas Adams wrote H2G2?

?You imagine the total No.of humans x work hours to complete your project ...

i flash recalled this (heres the web's estonian to engrish )

(powered by: µ$)

Estonian language text-speech synthesis

I think it should be possible to set up a sentence converter using existing software for basic conversations. I tried typing in "The black cat" in MS Word and used the translate found in word. It went out to wordlingo.com and translated to "el gato negro". I think anyone with average intel could understand that translation even if it turned out back words and came out negro gato or from Spanish to English cat black. All parties in a conversation would have to speak in basic words and try to avoid words that do not translate well. With some practice it should work fine. I think after a while the persons using the translator would pick up a few words and begin learning the language by hearing it in conversations.

Does anyone recall the trouble Monty Python created in London with a fake translation look-up book. The person who did not speak English would want directions to the train station, look it up in his language and would say "I think you look like a cat".

There were a number of these, all ending in fights and mayhem and one where he wanted to go the Church and he said to a policeman "let me run my hands over your tender body"

The cop said "not now, come back at 5 PM"

What fun a rogue could have with google if he hacked it...

I was black balled at a local Chinese restaurant. Misunderstanding over the word crazy. The waitress was a very cheerful young lady with a great sense of humor. I tried to compliment her and it went very very very wrong. I said "you're crazy" meaning funny. She took it as mentally insane. Tried to explain as she asked if I meant funny ha ha or something else. I said funny ha ha. No matter what I said from then on it just kept going down hill. So I quit digging the hole deeper finished my meal and left a really good tip. Next time in I could not even get my drink order. Quit going until she and her friends returned to China and the next wave a workers came in. True story.

I've done a little work in AI, and there was a time when this would have been seen as a huge challenge. However, now I routinely use the speech recognition on my cell phone when finding places, when doing web searches, making memos to myself, etc. I'll even hand the phone to my wife and she can use the voice recognition effectively, even though it has not "learned" her voice. So, text-to-speech is working well even in small devices.

Text-to-text Translators work reasonably well already. Most will correct syntax differences fairly well. This may be the weakest link.

Un français l'orateur peut facilement donner un sens à ce qui a été automatiquement traduits.

Text-to-speech is easiest and has worked "well enough" for a long time. That voice on your GPS may sound a little robotic, but it is almost always easily understood.

My smart phone does all this stuff (one after another, with program switching delays) right now.

So, it speech-speech translation has become almost a no-brainer for many languages. Integration and speed are the issues -- but most of this stuff happens surprisingly quickly already. I'd guess that if I simply combined existing functions so that they would happen one right after the other, a sentence in English could come out in French in about a second or two.

Thus, when Microsoft announced their speech-speech translator, the impressive part was how the subtleties of accent and intonation are handled. The basics are no longer impressive.

Which I don't say to be discouraging. But before you get started and spend a lot of time, you should be aware that this is already being done.