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Thanks for stopping by. I'm Carol Skyring & this is where I talk about videoconferencing.
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Apr
28
Telepresence language translation
April 28, 2009 | | Leave a Comment
I’ve just caught up on a story from last October about Cisco using simultaneous translation during a telepresence link.
In an analyst conference call, the company’s chief executive John Chambers demonstrated an experimental feature of its high-end videoconferencing systems that simultaneously interprets the languages spoken by its users. Chambers talked via telepresence with Mauricio Cruz, who answered in Spanish. In about one second, the system translated Cruz’s words, posted English subtitles at the bottom of screen and read them aloud in a computerized voice. The CEO admitted that the translation feature, developed over the past several months with software from Carnegie Mellon University, misses some words and isn’t perfect. But “this is where the architecture is going,” he said. “It isn’t about where the technology is today, but where it will be two, three, five years out.”
