Skype Translator and its significance to accessibility

Transcript

15 June 2014

Roberta: Technology company, Microsoft, has demonstrated a new application, Skype Translator, which provides near real time voice in caption translation of different languages. Today I’m talking to Media Access Australia’s Tim Lohman, who tracks technological changes and their effects in people with a disability, about the development. Welcome, Tim.

Tim: Hello there.

Roberta: Now what is Skype Translator?

Tim: Well Skype Translator is essentially an advancement of the popular Skype video calling application and what’s interesting about this one is that it uses, or enables users who speak different languages to understand each other. It does that by effectively translating, almost in real time, those different languages into captions, which can then be used by the different users via their screen so they can be understood effectively. Microsoft demonstrated this at a recent development conference in the US and it did that by having a German speaker and an English speaker have a conversation and essentially fully understand each other in real time, even though they spoke these different languages. Now the conversation was pretty heavily scripted but it did show the potential of the technology, which should be available to the public towards the end of the year. It will be in something that’s referred to as a beta, which is sort of an early form of a software, but should be pretty widely available for people to use on their PCs or their mobile phones, or other devices. At this stage it’s pretty unclear as to how many different languages will be supported by it’s thought that they will have quite a few languages over time. Maybe as an example they have another device called Bing Translator, which is effectively an online tool for translating text from one language into text of another language, and at that moment that supports about 40 different languages, so that will probably give people an example of how many languages might be supported when Skype comes out.

Roberta: So what you’re saying, Tim, is this application is quite significant then.

Tim: I think it is because what it does is really break down barriers between people from different countries, different nationalities, and the fact that it does that in almost real time I think is the really important factor in this. So it’s essentially taking science fiction and making it a reality. To give people an example, if they’re familiar with Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, this is essentially doing what the Babel Fish did or for Star Trek fans, essentially the same as the universal translator device. So things that were literally fiction 20 years ago are essentially a reality this year.

Roberta: So what’s the history of some of the technology that underpins Skype Translator, Tim?

Tim: Well I guess while the real time aspect of it is pretty new, it does rely on essentially decades worth of research in a few different areas, and that includes speech recognition, automatic translation, machine learning and a few other areas. But it seems to me that only in recent years that we’re beginning to see them made available to the public as applications which you can use in everyday life. So for example, if people think of their internet browsing, Google Translate will effectively translate a page maybe in Russian or Mandarin into English, so that’s effectively using that technology and making it available to the public for use in their everyday lives. Microsoft has something similar with Bing Translator, which I mentioned before. And again, it does that in 40 different languages, including Klingon, if you’re particularly nerdy. YouTube also does something quite similar with its automatic translation capabilities for the videos that you can upload. So we’re beginning to see some practical applications of what was just sort of theoretical research even 10 or 15 years ago.

Roberta: So what’s the potential impact of this technology for people with disabilities?

Tim: Well as far as I’m aware Skype Translator hasn’t really been discussed in the context of disability, but however, upon seeing the demonstration that Microsoft did offer a couple of weeks ago it immediately occurred to me that there was a real application for people with disabilities. So for example, if someone was hearing impaired I think they could have a conversation with someone who is vision impaired. So how that could work is by taking basically the hearing impaired person could type their conversation using a messenger capability in Skype and that could then be vocalised either by a screen reader, like an NVDA or some other kind of speech synthesis application or something that might be available in Skype later on then the vision impaired person could then have their speech turned into captions, which could then be easily understood by the hearing impaired person. And of course the same tools could be used by either of those people to then have conversations with people from another language, so it sort of overcomes language barriers but effectively disability barriers too.

Roberta: Well we certainly are moving ahead aren’t we. Thank you, Tim, for all of that today.

Tim: Thanks very much.

Roberta: And to find out more about access to media and technology visit Media Access Australia’s website, mediaaccess.org.au or call the office with any questions, 02) 9212 6242. I’ve been speaking with Tim Lohman, talking about Skype Translator and Media Access Australia is a supporter of this program.

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