Can I translate the live stream?

June 21, 2013 2:25 PM

I am attempting to "cover" a conference in Italy which will be livestreamed. I do not speak Italian. Is there any automatic translation software I can use in real time to have a prayer of understanding what's being said?

In addition to 2 laptops, I have an Android phone. Many of the apps I've seen (i.e., Google Translate) appear to be geared towards conversations, where you can say something into the phone and have the translation come out. I can translate snippets of videos this way by putting my phone up to the computer speakers, but this doesn't work very well for an ongoing presentation.

Free solutions would be ideal, but I wouldn't mind paying for a good app if it gave me what I needed.

posted by QuantumMeruit to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Do you need to cover it in real time? And will the stream be available afterward? The low-tech solution would be to hire an interpreter/translator to give you an audio or text translation.
posted by jaguar at 2:34 PM on June 21, 2013

It would be ideal if I could cover it in realtime. I'm not sure if the stream is available, and hiring a translator is probably outside of my budget.
posted by QuantumMeruit at 2:45 PM on June 21, 2013

No, I do not think any such software exists. Such voice recognition translation apps, such as those that plug into Google Translate, do a poor job when processing simple speech that is spoken slowly and deliberately. I do not think you have a prayer of processing such speech spoken at normal conversational speed. Machine translation is bad enough as it is and the text-to-speech angle is going to make it that much harder.
posted by Tanizaki at 3:11 PM on June 21, 2013

Dragon Naturally Speaking, software designed for a single user to speak directly into a microphone, starts at $100 dollars. It makes no attempt to understand speech, and instead merely transcribes it one word after another. It also only operates in one language. You're looking for software that understands human speech, fluently, in two different languages. Should such software exist (it doesn't), it would be substantially more than $100.

A human interpreter is your only real option.
posted by kavasa at 3:26 PM on June 21, 2013

I'm a language-industry tech pro, and I've seen this kind of realtime machine interpretation software demoed, although not in this language pair. It was a DARPA demo, FWIW.

And it sucked. The target-language output was almost useless.

Many of the apps I've seen (i.e., Google Translate) appear to be geared towards conversations, where you can say something into the phone and have the translation come out.

The output I've seen from these apps was generally much worse than the above-cited DARPA demo. Unfortunately, what you want has been coming Real Soon Now for the last decade or so. Couldn't possibly take more than another two decades to make it to market.
posted by BrunoLatourFanclub at 3:50 PM on June 21, 2013

I suspect an interpreter would be less money than you think. I searched for Italian translation in the city you list in your profile, and this company popped up. They do text-only translation rather than interpreting, but he says in his write up that he knows most of the Italian interpreters in the area and is more than willing to make recommendations. It may be worth sending him a message.
posted by jaguar at 3:50 PM on June 21, 2013

I have listened to conference papers in a number of languages, including Italian, which I know quite well. One major issue is that the way presenters actually present their papers varies widely: speaking erratically, going quickly, using obscure or technical vocabulary. The question sections are often even worse if you're unsure about the vocabulary. I think you need a real, knowledgable, human to do this, sorry.
posted by jetlagaddict at 3:52 PM on June 21, 2013

Post job offer at local university's international dorm, native/fluent speaker required to live-translate n-hour webcast, $50 (or whatever you think is reasonable).
posted by zippy at 8:00 PM on June 21, 2013

Also a language industry professional.

Hire an interpreter. If it helps to know what you're paying for, it's several years of education, plus professional experience in languages, plus living or at the least having regularly visited the country(-ies) where the other language is spoken, plus the honing of writing and communications skills in both the native language and the translated-from language, plus knowledge of and experience using appropriate references, plus research skills, plus professional experience in the contexts/fields being translated. (For instance, I specialize in IT translations and actually have a day job as a functional software tester and in PMO/project management office, which is a mix of business and technical writing as well as being a client and development interface.) It's a pretty big investment. You'll get what you pay for: a university student will be cheaper, and likely offer a comprehensible but not necessarily accurate translation (context + experience in different contexts count for a lot). A more experienced interpreter/translator with knowledge of the field and translating to their native language will cost more, be much more accurate, and also probably happy to help you figure out anything that doesn't seem quite clear to you. Language professionals generally stay in their professions because they can't help but love trying to comprehend things well, and sharing that understanding.
posted by fraula at 4:26 AM on June 22, 2013

Thanks, everyone, for the gut-check. It was really helpful to me. I wound up reassessing why I needed to have real-time translation of the stream, and wound up making a bootleg copy of the segment I was really interested in. I then paid a freelancer to do a quick-and-dirty translation of the recording for me, and it was a lot cheaper than I thought it would be.

Also, one of the presentations was by a German doctor, who gave her presentation in English with someone (in the room) giving a live translation into Italian. Yay international conferences. :)
posted by QuantumMeruit at 8:53 AM on June 25, 2013