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Comment by minalecs | Hacker News Reader

dude.. google is getting closer to a real time universal speech translator and you find a way to be unimpressed. What does impress you ?

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Hate to repost it but:

Everythings Amazing & Nobodys Happy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

I didn't intend for that comment to sound quite as snarky as it did. But my point is that real time speech translation needs to work precisely in those situations. Voice recognition and computerized translation have been around for a while. They are nearly always stymied by the problems mentioned in the article we have been "close" to this for at least a decade. What would impress me is if they had developed new algorithms to overcome these exceptionally challenging problems.

Voice recognition and computerized translation have been around for a while.

Now your reaction makes sense. If you're viewing at as an advance in the technology here (research wise, etc), then this announcement has nothing new. But from a standpoint of anyone with an Android phone having access to this whenever they want (accessibility and ease of use), this is incredible. I think most people are concerned with the latter, but you do have a point about there being nothing "new" here.

My guess would be a babel fish. It only picks up on subconscious frequencies, so outside noise will not get in the way. It also proves the non-existence of god.

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