Photos: Tower of Babel crumples with new tech
Software and hardware from Carnegie Mellon could make it easier for people who speak different languages to understand each other.
1 of 3 Bill Detwiler/ZDNET
electrodes
The electrodes on the face of this graduate student pick up electrical impulses from the muscles flexed while mouthing words. The impulses are then transliterated into language (in this case, English) and can then be translated into foreign languages.
2 of 3 Bill Detwiler/ZDNET
subtitles
The Translation Glasses essentially feed people subtitles. A computer translates a speech on the fly, converts it into text, and serves it up as written text in the user's native tongue.
3 of 3 Bill Detwiler/ZDNET
Translation Glasses
The Translation Glasses in action. With these, you can hear the speaker in his or her original voice but follow along.
"In a Kurosawa movie, you want to hear the samurai grunt in Japanese," said Carnegie Mellon professor Alex Waibel. "I once saw an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie dubbed into German. You lose the whole joke."
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