Microsoft's Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid has demonstrated what technology Microsoft has been working on in the translation department. What follows can only be witnessed to be believed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu-nlQqFCKg
The tech demo starts fairly routinely. A camera feed is projected above him and a computer is listening to his speech, converting it to text between an 80 or 90% accurate rate. By any means this is accomplished vastly due to modern algorithms with popular products like Apple's Siri doing this regularly. He explains the leaps in technology for a good 5 minutes before bringing a bigger gun.
Next the computer translates the text into Chinese. Of course Chinese to English is again done moderately well by other products. Google translate for example might not always get the word order right but it does it.
Finally a text-to-speech program is added, synthesized with Rick's voice. The final logical step as you will. While the translation rate drops to around 70% it does show that with small improvements this technology could be common place by the end of the decade, if not sooner, with far greater accuracy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu-nlQqFCKg
The tech demo starts fairly routinely. A camera feed is projected above him and a computer is listening to his speech, converting it to text between an 80 or 90% accurate rate. By any means this is accomplished vastly due to modern algorithms with popular products like Apple's Siri doing this regularly. He explains the leaps in technology for a good 5 minutes before bringing a bigger gun.
Next the computer translates the text into Chinese. Of course Chinese to English is again done moderately well by other products. Google translate for example might not always get the word order right but it does it.
Finally a text-to-speech program is added, synthesized with Rick's voice. The final logical step as you will. While the translation rate drops to around 70% it does show that with small improvements this technology could be common place by the end of the decade, if not sooner, with far greater accuracy.