Real-time translated conversations

Well, it happened. On 27th May, Skype announced that they have been developing this tool for some time and they are not doing it with machines only! We always believe that machines cannot replace human translation but it seems that Skype combined them both.

Here is the news that published in Microsoft’s blog the other day.

You can always click the link at the bottom to read more.

During his conversation with Walt and Kara, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed his views on how we’re evolving to a more personal, more human era of computing, and I had the good fortune to join Satya on stage to demo – for the the first time publicly – an exciting new capability we’re developing for Skype.

Imagine in the very near future technology allowing humans to bridge geographic and language boundaries to connect mind to mind and heart to heart in ways never before possible.

Skype Translator results from decades of work by the industry, years of work by our researchers, and now is being developed jointly by the Skype and Microsoft Translator teams. The demo showed near real-time audio translation from English to German and vice versa, combining Skype voice and IM technologies with Microsoft Translator, and neural network-based speech recognition. Skype Translator is a great example of why Microsoft invests in basic research. We’ve invested in speech recognition, automatic translation and machine learning technologies for more than a decade, and now they’re emerging as important components in this more personal computing era. You can learn more about the research behind this initiative here.

Skype Translator first will be available as a Windows 8 beta app before the end of 2014. Skype itself is available across a number of devices and computing platforms. If you aren’t already using Skype for voice and video calls, I encourage you to download Skype and create your account.

 

source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2014/05/27/microsoft-demos-breakthrough-in-real-time-translated-conversations.aspx

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Advertisement

Namez: Record and share your name pronunciation

Finally, somebody did this! 🙂

My foreign friends never pronounce  my name correctly, ever! 🙂 And I always hear people pronouncing the names of celebrities in a wrong way. This web site helps you record your real name or listen to others’.

Let’s have a look at how it works!

 

You just hit “Record” and type your name:

You sign up and record as many names as you want!

You can also browse other names!

http://namez.com/

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Community Interpreting During Disasters

 

In this blog post, I don’t feel like to introduce an exciting product or funny puns because 3 days ago a mine exploded in Turkey’s Soma province and “at least” 300 people died in that mine… It is quite sad because almost all the men in Soma province make a living by this mine and now, some of them are dead and the survivors don’t know where to work after that…

It reminds me one of my blog posts I wrote after Van earthquake in 2011. This blog post highlighted the importance of community interpreting during such disasters. The situation is different in Soma because everyone is speaking Turkish and there is no need for community interpreting. I just wanted to highlight its importance once again:

 

Here is an explanatory article about community interpreting by Margareta Bowen. I have quoted the parts I find interesting. For the rest of it, you can click the link at the bottom:

” ‘The community interpreter has a very different role and responsibilities from a commercial or conference interpreter. She is responsible for enabling professional and client, with very different backgrounds and perceptions and in an unequal relationship of power and knowledge, to communicate to their mutual satisfaction.’ (Shackman, Jane. The Right to be Understood: A Handbook on Working With, Employing and Training Community Interpreters. 1984, Cambridge, England, National Extension College.)

The settings are hospitals and doctors’ offices, schools, the various offices dealing with immigrant matters, housing and social security, and police stations. Compared to conference interpreting, the range of languages needed is enormous, even when compared to what is in store for the European Union. Moreover, the language level may be quite different from that of a diplomatic conference: regional variations and dialects can be a problem.

Some languages dominate: Spanish in the US, Turkish in Germany and Austria, Italian and Greek in Australia. But the Health Care Interpreting Services office of the Heartland Alliance in Chicago at present has demand for 28 languages.

Interest in this kind of interpreting, however, has grown by leaps and bounds. Last year the International Conference on University Institutes for Translation and Interpretation (CIUTI) decided that institutes do not have to teach conference interpreting exclusively in order to become a member. They may offer any of a range of interpreter specializations, including community interpreting. Read more…“

For other types of interpreting, click here.

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Do You Like Dogs and Puns? :)

I laughed so hard when I first saw this post . 🙂

I don’t know if you like dogs or not, but I’m quite sure you love puns! So I hope you’ll enjoy reading this post with these images that I chose from a Buzzfeed list.

You can always click the link at the bottom to read the whole text.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/tanyachen/pun-dog-puns-that-will-instantly-brighten-your-day

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What Does Your Handwriting Say About You?

I had a great handwriting when I was in middle school and high school. When the teacher need to write a long passage on the board, she used to make me do it. 🙂 But over years, the computers replace the handwriting and we need to write things down less. As a result, my handwriting become more and more messy. 🙂

As translators, our job now requires sitting in front of computer all day.

This is of course something more practical but I have never given up my notebooks and colorful Stabilo pens! 🙂 I still like writing things down instead of using a notebook on iPhone of iPad. I’m sure you are also fond of such stuff no matter how old you are or how often you use computer.

Anyway, for those who still like writing things down, here is a guideline what their handwriting says about them! 🙂

 

 

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