Just before Christmas, Microsoft released a preview of Skype Translator (for Windows 8.1), which allows English and Spanish speakers to have spoken conversations translated on the fly.
The Indians assembled a dossier, containing excerpts of these conversations, translated into English, which they presented to Pakistan, the United States, and other governments; one version ran to a hundred and eighteen pages.
But would such exercises, or similar conversations, translate in a real clinic?
Their objectives were to write programs and build machines that could carry on conversations, translate languages, interpret pictures, and reason like human beings.
(The telephone conversation is translated from an ad hoc mixture of French and English, representing a genuine dual effort).
When the conversation was translated — a job completed only this Wednesday — investigators were alarmed: "She says words to the effect of, 'Don't worry, this guy has a lot of money.
"We wanted to make a small performance, but we were not sure what," said Map. (The telephone conversation is translated from an ad hoc mixture of French and English, representing a genuine dual effort).
Five years on from the "Facebook revolution" of the Arab spring, at a time when the internet is just as likely to be spoken of as a distraction from activism than as a tool for it, Black Lives Matter has been held up as an unequivocal success story – an online conversation that translated to action offline.
Speaking of making its products available everywhere, Google also launched Hangouts in India yesterday, and if you think about how strong Google is with translation software, you can imagine a world where one day you'll be able to do a Hangout with someone who doesn't speak your language and have the conversation seamlessly translated for you on the fly.
Other products put a spin on existing technology, such as Michigan's Speakeasy, a platform that lets users chat with one another in one language and have the conversation actively translated into another language.
