Language, the Final Frontier
It seems to be the general trend in everything. The microprocessor-software combo seems to do most things that was done by humans much faster and way better. Except language. That’s one area that still resists the tech juggernaut. Items related to language, like translations and speech, seem too tough to crack. Let’s start with translation. Word Lens , an app developed for the iPhone, became very famous due to videos like this: Point your phone, take a picture and voila! The translated text appears. Awesome, isn’t it (even if it only worked between English and Spanish)? People certainly thought so and shelled out money to buy the app. Which is when the complaints started: the translations weren’t always right. Nor were they context sensitive. Google Translate creates and scans (massive) databases, and then applies algorithms to decide (guess?) which words mean the same thing in different languages. Now Google’s taken it to the next level by combing translations with speech recognition:...