Learning a second language is a major hassle. Thanks to researchers at Microsoft, we may no longer have to bother. They've built software that translates your voice into a foreign tongue.
The tool, demonstrated March 6 during a tech conference at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash., learns your voice with an hour of training. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC Universal.)
With your voice in the bag, the program works similar to other text-to-speech tools that take text in one language and speak it in another. But instead of a creepy synthesized voice, it sounds close to yours.
The program can currently translate between 26 languages, including English, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish, according to research scientist Frank Soong.
This is an upgrade to the websites and travel apps we turn to whenever we need to translate text from one language to another or learn how to say "ticket," for example, at a Beijing train station.
A translation tool loaded with this software could, for example, give users more confidence that the true intent of their words gets across when using it to negotiate a business deal in a foreign country.
After all, "the word is just one part of what a person is saying," Shrikanth Narayanan, a linguist and engineer at the University of California, Los Angeles, told MIT's Technology Review.
Intonation, emphasis, and dramatic pauses, for example, also play a role.
"Those things matter," he added, " and this project clearly knows that."
- Via Technology Review
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website and follow him on Twitter. For more of our Future of Technology series , watch the featured video below.
