Personal PC communication translations
Aethra, a leading global telecommunications company based in Italy is currently involved with the development of a personal translation audio-video communication system. The system has evolved from the Negotiating through SPOken Language in E-commerce (NESPOLE) project, which aims to support multilingual online translations. Once up and running, the general public will be able to communicate with other people of different languages from the comfort of their home PC. The principle feature behind the architecture of NESPOLE is its flexible distribution of the modules it uses for data and video communications, audio coding/decoding and translation processes. The primary characteristics for the translation processes are speech recognition, analysis, generation and synthesis. Supported by a web-cam, these characteristics will enable the general public to see the other person, and understand the conversation whilst they both speak in different languages. An experimental module exists, but Aethra is currently conducting a study with respect to the module modifications and future improvements. Aethra has also contacted another company that is interested in adopting the NESPOLE architecture so that it can be made available to its clients.
