Why Skype wants to Speak your Language

Microsoft's announcement of the imminent arrival of real-time speech-to-speech translation software in the shape of Skype Translator will need to ride a wave of public scepticism, before it lives up to the hype of bringing a revolution in communication that it promises to deliver

In Douglas Adams' fabulously humorous science fiction adventure, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, instant translation is achieved via the Babel fish, which fits in the ear of the user and instantly allows you to understand anything said to you in any form of language. Yahoo even paid tribute to Adams' fictitious animal by calling their original online translation service, BabelFish.com, before changing it to the slightly more prosaic, Bing Translator.

In creating the Babel Fish, Adams set the bar extremely high for any type of machine translation - albeit his version was a fish - perhaps Yahoo even realised they weren't living up to such high expectations and that's why they changed the name! The reality is that any form of translation service that hypes itself as instant translation is going to have to overcome that scepticism, before the public accepts it as offering anything anywhere near what it claims to deliver.

The problem is that we have all experienced online translation services, from Google Translate to Bing Translator, and, whilst they can be useful in a range of circumstances, they also have severe limitations. They often mis-translate with humorous and worrying frequency, but that ls not to say there hasn't been some slow and discernible improvements, particularly with Google Translate, which is where most of my experience lies.

Skype Translator's Unveiling

At an event in July, Skype demonstrated the service to its Worldwide Partner Conference, which was, you would have thought, a generally sympathetic audience. Even they, however, were unable to stifle their laughter when the opening pleasantries in English and German were amusingly mistranslated as:

Well how is it me friends.

Sounding a bit more like Jack Sparrow than an accurate translation of the original, it thereby confirmed the prejudices of a sceptical audience in six short words! Nevertheless, the service, and the presentation, did manage to redeem itself slightly with some light-hearted banter about the World Cup and the lack of English success, compared to that of Germany. It was clever, without being breathtaking, and it's not quite achieved the Babel Fish standard yet, but that's not to say it won't.

Machine Learning

Skype are currently offering the chance to pre-register for the Skype Translator service ahead of its official launch. The registration page openly admits that it will have 'a few rough edges' at first - as the WPC event confirmed - but the more it translates, then the more that the machine learning algorithms will be able to incorporate patterns of speech, idioms, accents, and colloquialisms. And this will be the real test of its ability to accurately translate living languages that have been evolving and developing since humans first began to talk.

The Babel Fish Test

To help us to assess the effectiveness of Skype Translator, I've come up with the Babel Fish test, which is the language translation equivalent of the Turing Test for a computer. If we can converse through it and not feel that it is being mediated by a machine and that it also feels natural and authentic - and above all accurate - then Skype Translator will have passed the Babel Fish test.

When Skype Translator launches, I suspect it may initially be ridiculed and provide fodder for many amusing virals and even skits on Saturday Night Live. But if the machine learning is able to incorporate all of the quirks and differences that characterize the various languages it will be required to translate, then it has a future. But that is a big ask! The more that we use it, the better it will get, but if we loose confidence in it at an early stage, then a lack of use will hamper its development. And if that happens, then we'll just have to wait for the next contender to pass the Babel Fish test!

So the launch of Skype Translator won't mean the arrival of the Babel Fish any time too soon, but as an online translator might say: here's hoping the day well goes for you, me friends!

Will Trevor is the Founder and Training Consultant at Windsor Training. Please click 'Follow' if you would like to hear more from Will in the future. Feel free to also connect via his Linkedin page, or via Twitter and Facebook or email: will.trevor@windsortraining.net

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