[ExI] chinese synthesis

[spike]

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>...Rafal, your comment made me think of a good name for a real-time high
quality machine translator that would reverse those unfortunate events:
Lebab... spike
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It occurred to me that we have all the elements in place to make a Lebab.
We have sufficiently powerful computers we carry with us, our phones.  We
have speech recognition that isn't perfect but it is very good.  We have
online translations, which aren't really good but are better than fair.  We
have speech synthesis, which is very good.  We have a system that can do
speech synthesis with one's own voice.  So we could theoretically do this
now: create a portable system that would translate our words into another
language and utter them with our own voice.

Of course languages have all that cultural stuff which we don't know how to
do, expressions and so forth.  That would be lost; we would get only very
literal translations.

A few years ago we had a Japanese guy who knows no English try to join an
online discussion group for British motorcycles (BSAs.)  We really never did
get that to work very well.  He took it a lot more seriously than we did.
Apparently he kept thinking he had accidentally insulted us.  His
literally-translated replies were hilarious.  For instance he would struggle
to apologize, and someone would post "No problem dude, get over that, man."
So when that went to Japanese, it must have come across as "Negative
malfunction urban tourist who dresses as cowboy, acquire a position which is
concentric to but with higher elevation than object in question, male
adult."  

This must have been extremely confusing.  

So he would post stuff that would transliterate back to comments such as "So
repentant am I for causing the severe offense of my co-conspirators in
motorcycle!  My face is cast down in severe self-recrimination and desire
for forgive!  My wish may plead your to pardon in sorrow of me, upon my
shame!"

So all that subtle cultural stuff would be lost.  But in the case with the
Japanese motorcycle mechanic, if we stayed right on the technical stuff and
didn't try to chat, it kinda worked.  A Lebab might work to some extent, if
we didn't try to get too poetic with it.

spike