techknology's blog

Google’s continuing to push technological boundaries. In language, Google has been working on both text translation and voice recognition. It only seems logical to combine the two for real-time speech translation. And even better yet, real-time speech translation built into the software of a smartphone.

“We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time,” said Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services, “Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on.”

It’s the smartphone that Google hopes will aid this quest. Because smartphones are personal, it’s possible to have them learn the speech patterns and intonations of the user. The software doesn’t have to master all language possibilities, just yours. This would simplify the task of providing a machined-based translation.

While Google’s idea is interesting, not all are convinced a solution is right around the corner. David Crystal, an honorary professor of linguistics at Bangor University, says, “The problem with speech recognition is the variability in accents. No system at the moment can handle that properly.” Crystal says its possible Google will get their first, but it will probably take a few years longer than than expected.

Many people will agree that consumers should have unfettered access to the internet via wireless and landline connections. There have been instances where access to specific websites and specific types of traffic have been filtered or outright blocked by ISPs and wireless carriers. In July 2009, AT&T Wireless blocked access to the 4chan message boards.

The 4chan site is a message board that reportedly has as many as 200,000 messages posted each day.

The issue with the site and wireless carriers stems from the site being used to launch different types of internet attacks ranging from mere pranks to more serious network attacks. The 4chan.org website is reporting that it is being blocked by Verizon Wireless. The site posted a statement to its front page that read, “Over the past 72 hours, we’ve been receiving reports from Verizon Wireless customers having difficulty accessing the image boards.”

4chan went on to claim that only traffic on port 80 was being blocked leading it to believe that the site had been intentionally blocked and that some sort of problem was not causing Verizon Wireless users to not be able to access the site. A 4chan administrator going by “moot” wrote that Verizon had been contacted and a Verizon representative said, “You’ll need the customer to call to request it be unblocked.”

The same user “moot” reported yesterday that after contacting the Verizon Network Repair Bureau the response received was that the site had been explicitly blocked. It’s hard to say whether this is a good or a bad thing. If the site is a rally point for attacks online, some might argue that cutting the site off is a good thing. However, once you start down the slope of censoring and blocking content that some deem objectionable, those that use the same site for legitimate reasons are sure to be angered.