The world is becoming even smaller and language barriers will soon be something of the past as Meta just announced a new launch of speech-to-speech language translation in real time! No more worrying about how to communicate any of your campaigns to send a specific message to followers as Meta has made our lives that much easier.
In an effort to broaden its quest to “connect the world”, Meta has developed a new, AI-based speech-to-speech translation process, to provide more opportunities for people around the world to connect, in real-time, despite language barriers.
As you can see in this example, Meta’s new Universal Speech Translator project converts audio spoken in Hokkien, a primarily spoken language from China, into English audio in real time.
Because Hokkien is a lesser-used language, and doesn’t have a wide corpus of text-based material available, Meta says that this new process will alleviate the need for transcription output in translation – and with almost 3,500 living languages being primarily spoken, that could be hugely impactful for global connection and engagement.
“While the Hokkien translation model is still a work in progress and can translate only one full sentence at a time, it’s a step toward a future where simultaneous translation between languages is possible. The techniques we pioneered can be extended to many other written and unwritten languages.” – As per the official statement Released by Meta.
The newly launch speech-to-speech translation could deem, in the broader view, prosperous in the metaverse in the future, enabling wider interaction between niche communities built in the digital sphere, on a global scale.
“We believe spoken communication can bring people together wherever they are located — even in the metaverse.”
The prosperity of breaking language barriers is an incredible milestone for tech-giants to reach within the realms of communication but looking deeper into the message Meta portrayed they definitely did commit a marketing misstep, as most of the mother company’s apps are banned in China, so we’re not sure that this specific example would apply here.
On the other hand, as a trilingual reporter, language translation limitations often force people to learn a language much quicker due to a necessity to adapt within an environment. The increase of translation technologies makes us wonder if this would hinder more people from learning new languages in the future as Meta has made it hassle-free to translate your mother tongue, having no need to learn through embarrassing mistakes. Making it somewhat counter-productive in its goal of connectivity while at the same time a dependable tool to use to communicate.
Who knows in what direction this could result in, the broader concept is that audio translation will facilitate a Star Trek-like metaverse experience, where anyone can speak their native language and still take part in the global conversation.
Which is pretty amazing, and it’s amazing to consider how far we’ve come with translation tools and processes, and what that could mean for future opportunities.
That includes business collaboration and marketing opportunities as well. Opening up the world to broader connectivity to expand market reach and could facilitate all-new potential for many creators and businesses in previously untapped online communities.
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