Google touts Babel Fish-esque in-ear real-time translators. And the usual computer stuff Google today showed off some new Android phones, a laptop, two Home assistants, and a genuine surprise: a set of earbuds that attempt to emulate Douglas Adams’ legendary Babel Fish – a real-time language translator. During the hardware unveiling, an event dubbed Made by Google, in San Francisco a few hours ago, CEO Sundar …
So, it is not self contained, and uses your Smart phone which likely uses Google servers, to listen to all your personal and business conversations, and likely politicians discuss nation compromising stuff. Save us.
Can't somebody make a little computer that has self contained live translation and max encrypted ear buds. You speak, it translates to the other person, and it translates but also translate to the other language and optionally translate hat back.again in your ear, for you to check (experience with Google translation)?
Probably eventually they can, given the increasing computing power and storage available on phones. Google is a cloud company though, and don't control the hardware (other than the tiny segment of market share Pixel has) so I wouldn't look for them to do that.
Some might suggest Apple is the more likely candidate, with their emphasis on privacy and an SoC twice as fast as anyone else's. However, even with all the cloud resources Google is able to throw at it, Google Translate is still laughably bad for trying to act as a Babel Fish, cute pre-planned demo notwithstanding. If you doubt that, pick a random Reg sized news story written in another language and let Google have a go at it, and see how poorly it does. It does well enough to kind of get the gist of it, but it hurts your brain to read, and would drive you nuts if you had it speaking that way in your ear!
Even if Apple could match that poor translation ability, which they probably can't, running on a phone instead of in the cloud, which may not be possible, it wouldn't be nearly good enough.
As phone processing gets more powerful... yes, but you won't like it with the present level of battery power density, unless they drop this slenderness fad and give us a nice chunky phone again, perhaps with hot-swappable batteries.
And I suspect there'll be government pressure against it, from many governments, because of the enhanced privacy it'll provide. Maybe even some legislation on some weird pretext, such as classifying it as a munition?
That's what strong ND filters are for. As long as people don't stay still for enough time, they won't record in the image. The disadvantage is you need long exposures, and that means a good tripod and head, and of course, it works for still subjects (i.e. architecture).
Anyway, because inanimate things can't be target of ads, especially when not related to humans, Google needs to know which people are in the image and what they have. Unlimited storage means also an unlimited data trove for Google. As machine learning algorithms improve, they can be used to analyze people in the images and profile them even better recognizing what they wear and what they use... and tell the camera what's the best moment to take a snap to maximize the gathered data.
if the voice differentiation can be fooled.
If parents limit the usability of the device for children, then surely those children will try to imitate their parents' voices to undo this, no?
Will there be some kind of codeword or will it simply be voice for id?
"No no, it's mom speaking. I just have a cold"
"So when the Swedish person spoke, the English person's phone translated the Swedish into English and played it through their headphones."
Google Translate can't get that right for written text at the moment - so it is doubtful they have achieved it for real-time speech. Context is important.
Used Google Translate yesterday in my weekly run of trawling updated web pages in several European languages. Several times it omitted words completely or didn't have the vocabulary - particularly annoying when it's a negative modifier that is dropped. Words like "by", "on", "in", "with" are often given the wrong contextual meaning.
"Words like "by", "on", "in", "with" are often given the wrong contextual meaning."
yeah, English and its plethora of prepositions and their subtleties. Some lingos only have one or just a few. 'En' in spanish, is one example. How do you translate English to Spanish so that context fixes it? "It's in the box" = "Está en la caja." "no, it's not ON the box, it's IN the box" "No, no está en la caja. Está EN la caja." Yeah that'll help.
On a related note, I can think of 10 ways to say "I" in Japanese, each with its own implications, some of which might insult people if you do it wrong, or might make you sound disingenuous, or immature, or arrogant [and I'm just learning the lingo for fun, and am not an expert]. Similarly a number of ways to say 'you', some of which might carry different implications depending on the dialect people use, or who says it ['anata' vs 'omae' for example]. How do you program a translator for this? You really can't, unless the translator can read minds...
The Babel fish needs to translate politician-speak, that long-winded gabble that seems to say so much but either says nothing at all or means pretty much the opposite to what you are hearing.
Admittedly, the Donald has gone along way in the other direction as he ONLY talks in Twitter format.
Bleeding edge 2020 Google Summit tech: fully two way sprog-to-Tamagotchi home gateway. You get the app, it reminds you to touch the "feed" / "clean" / "play with" buttons once a day, you can do it from the other side of the globe, no need to ever physically touch the filthy little buggers at all!
I use the 3.5mm audio jack daily, anywhere from 1 hour to 9 hours a day.
How often is my phone exposed to being submersed in water? 0 hours daily. Even if I use it outside, I have a thing called a rain jacket which has a pocket where the phone resides in.
Amount of times I've needed a waterproof phone? 0.
So I guess I'm just not the target market for the Pixel or the new iPhones. Oh well! I'll just carry on as best I can not paying big money for a phone.
Not being able to call for help after falling in a ditch and soaking your phone is a calamity.
I grew up on a country road. We didn't have your puny little laughable gutters either side, we had huge ditches that'd sometimes be close to 1m deep and 2m wide. They had to take all the rain that would fall into them until they could drain/evaporate. Me and mates would run around in them, jump bikes over them or out of them (where there was a ramp for the drive - big bonus points if you could clear the driveway). I've had a love of the outdoors and done lots of tramping and even some mountain climbing (when I was a less 'well-rounded' person). Done lots of riding and driving on country and mountain roads.
Haven't yet managed to fall into a ditch though. Even taking a dare from a friend to ride along a straight road with my eyes shut. It's actually quite easy to not do, and I sometimes wonder how many people manage to do it.
Your not the average millenial who needs to chat and send photos under the shower.
Also, there are so few differentiating features they need to invent new ones: "what, your phone is just IP54? Mine is IP67!!!"
Next feature will be bulletproof phones, especially in the US. A little larger, and they could become useful shields when someone fires at you....
Having an earbud live translating everything you hear into your language, using the crappy stilted translation Google Translate provides.
Sure, it is fine if you want to communicate basic stuff like telling a cab driver where to take you, or him telling you how much you owe. But it is utter shit for any sort of real conversation. Just try translating a news story written in another language. While you can tell what it is talking about, you're almost certain to end up confused about some basic facts because the translation completely misses something crucial.
We are years if not decades away from a practical Babel Fish. But hey, not being ready for prime time never stopped Google before - they think if you slap a 'beta' label on something it doesn't matter how crappy it is! I'm sure that demo was impressive, but it was canned speech they knew would be properly translated (and hey, how many people there actually spoke Swedish to know how well it even worked?)
Sure, it is fine if you want to communicate basic stuff like telling a cab driver where to take you, or him telling you how much you owe
If it does this well then this could be enough to create and own a new market and it will, of course, vastly increase Google's training materials. There are lots of people who travel to countries where they don't speak the language.
I'm more disappointed by the battery life: my Jabra Sport does 15 hours but these would be more comfortable with the cord. But some kind of pendant with battery and controls would be my preference (like my old Sennheiser)
Though it may not have an integral audio jack, it was mentioned that the phone comes with a USB-C audio jack converter - so basically, you plug one extra little bit of plastic into your phone, along with your headphones, and its exactly the same as you have now.
And since its included, it's no extra cost.
Does the USB to headphone jack convertor stop you charging the phone if you are using it?
Don't want phone draining if listening to music (many workplaces no music or other personal stuff allowed on work PC, so have to listen on phone or MP3 player) because unable to listen & charge simultaneously
I've always found connections to a phone a problem when on the move and have been using Bluetooth phones for over 10 years because of this. A 3.5 mm jack has quite a bit of leverage on a phone an can easily lead to considerable damage by accident. But it can be useful to plug the phone into a speaker (if it doesn't support BT or if the codec support is shitty) so the adapter is a must.
On the whole, like removable batteries, I suspect a lot of people will bitch about this change and buy them anyway.
Which makes you think, why didn't they provide a magnetic connection for 3.5mm jack devices?
Not sure you really want magnets there, but, yes the power connections for MacBooks were a great idea. An alternative, mechanical approach would be similar to that developed by Nokia for its phones. I think it was called a "pop-port", Ericsson had something similar. If only the industry had bothered to standardise on something like that… Instead I think 3.5 won out due to the availability of standard components.
USB-C suffers from the same problems because the developers chose to solve the wrong problem. They could have chosen to create a plug that could obviously go one way and concentrated on making the connection robust but also the weakest link so that neither cable nor phone would suffer. Oh well, always hope for the next version…
In the meantime wireless charging is probably going to lead to phones without ports altogether (you can imagine some kind of maintenance port) but an entirely sealed unit will appeal to some.
I look forward to seeing people get slapped, punched and possibly arrested because they were stupid enough to rely on this Googlefish. Google Translate is a terrible translator, often changing sentences to the opposite of their original meaning. I read an article in German yesterday that was about a man bribing a tax official and Google translated it as he was BITING the tax official. As for adding Machine Learning to everything, Translate got worse when Google added Artificial Incompetence.
Most buds come with covers in different sizes to fit different lugholes. Get those right and they should generally stay in.
Different case when you're on the move in which case the cord really ought to go all the way round so that even if the buds do fall out of your ears, you won't drop them.
Sennheiser got this right with the MM200 but stopped making it for some reason. :-( https://www.bhphotovideo.com/images/images500x500/Sennheiser_MM_200_MM_200_Bluetooth_Headset_612598.jpg
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