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Speech Translation in 23 Languages will allow up to 5 users to chat simultaneously. International Research Consortium (U-STAR) with members from 23 Countries unveils a Speech Translation Application, “VoiceTra4U-M”.

An international research collaboration entity, "Universal Speech Translation Advanced Research Consortium (U-STAR)" consisting of 26 institutes from 23 countries, with an aim to enable everyone in the world to communicate without any language barriers, has developed a speech translation application called “VoiceTra4U-M”, allowing 5 people to chat simultaneously in 23 different languages (as of June 2012). “VoiceTra4U-M” can be downloaded for free from the App Store. It allows up to 5 users to chat in different languages from their own devices, in real-time either face-to-face or remotely from all around the world. Background ---------------- The rapid growth of information communication technologies and transportation has resulted in accelerating the explosive increase of interactions between people across the globe today. However, language barriers still stand tall and interfere with people’s communication. As a useful means to break these barriers, speech-to-speech translation systems; which allow a user’s speech to be translated into a selected language with a synthesized voice, is now drawing attention from various fields. Ongoing research in institutes all over the world has been taking place for speech recognition, machine translation, and acoustic synthesis. Connecting these speech translation servers in respective countries via a network became a pre-requisite in order to realize simultaneous multilingual speech translation. This was when the Consortium of U-STAR1, Universal Speech Translation Advanced Research, was established. Such a framework in the network-based speech-to-speech translation system brings huge advantages, as organizations need simply connect their speech translation servers to the U-STAR server, whenever they need to translate their own languages into multiple languages, and has accelerated further development and research in the speech translation field. New Achievement ----------------------- U-STAR, currently comprised of 26 institutes from 23 countries, has been conducting ongoing research on speech translation. U-STAR and its members have collaboratively developed the multilingual speech translation system to provide translation services via publicly-released client application, by connecting the servers of U-STAR member institutes mutually, with the communication protocol which was implemented based on the ITU-T recommendations F.745 and H.625. U-STAR hope to see people use “VoiceTra4U-M” in various occasions when translation and interpretation are requested at global events, such as the London Olympic Games in July 2012, and that “VoiceTra4U-M” may come in handy for people wishing to overcome language barriers. For more details on how to use the application, please refer to the appendix (link to full press release and appendix below). Future Plans ----------------- More languages will be available when other research entities participate by plugging in the U-STAR speech translation communication protocol libraries. U-STAR also seeks to utilize the log data of speech translation collected from field experiments, helping each research organization raise their accuracies in speech translation technology, as well as encouraging business opportunities for the speech translation service to be cultivated in various markets. *iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc. App Store is a trademark of Apple inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries For Technical Issues -------------------------- Universal Speech Translation Advanced Research Consortium (U-STAR) Secretariat : u-star-sec@khn.nict.go.jp Technical Support : u-star-support@khn.nict.go.jp Media Contact ----------------------- National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) Sachiko Hirota Public Relations Department Tel: +81-42-327-6923 Fax: +81-42-327-7587 E-mail: publicity@nict.go.jp Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) Agency for Science, Technology and Research Ms Doris Yang Corporate Communications SERC Shared Services DID: (65) 6419 6525 Email: yangscd@scei.a-star.edu.sg -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fact Sheet for I2R’s involvement in U-STAR Speech Translation Application – VoiceTra4U-M Year 2009 • I2R successfully completed its first Asian network-based Speech-to-Speech Translation System. • The system operates through a portable device and provides real-time, location free, network-based speech translation. • It was able to translate speech between the Bahasa Melayu and any of the eight other Asian languages – Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Hindi and English. • Dr. Li Haizhou started developing the system with his team in I2R in 2007. • As a member of the Asian Speech Translation Advanced Research Consortium, I2R provided the enabling technologies that include automatic speech recognition (ASR), machine translation (MT) and text-to-speech (TTS) through Speech Translation Markup Language (STML) web servers for Bahasa Melayu to English translation, which allows users to perform multi-speech translation in real time anywhere in the world. Year 2012 • The Asian Speech Translation Advanced Research Consortium was expanded to a worldwide consortium known as the Universal Speech Translation Advanced Research Consortium (U-STAR) in 2010 to develop a universal network-based speech-to-speech translation system. • U-STAR currently comprises more than 26 institutes from 23 countries. This is the largest language translation network in the world. • U-STAR members collaboratively developed the multilingual speech translation system and connect their servers mutually with the communication protocol implemented based on the ITU-T recommendations F.745 and H.625. • The technologies are accessible through a smart phone application, VoiceTra4U-M. • The application allows 5 people to chat simultaneously in 23 different languages. • As one of the founding research institutes in the U-STAR, I2R has enhanced its Bahasa Melayu (Singapore’s national language) language translation capability for real-time and large scale deployments since 2009. In this release, users are able to speak in Bahasa Melayu and communicate with others speaking in any of the 23 other languages through VoiceTra4U-M. • The iPhone version of VoiceTra4U-M will be available for worldwide review from end of June to 31st March 2013. Users can download the app for free. • During the London Olympics Games (27 July – 12 August 2012), participating athletes and tourists attending the games will be encouraged to try out the VoiceTra4U-M to break the language barrier and improve communication between people of different nationalities. • More information can be found at http://www.ustar-consortium.com --- About Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) The Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R pronounced as i-squared-r) is a member of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) family. Established in 2002, our mission is to be the globally preferred source of innovations in `Interactive Secured Information, Content and Services Anytime Anywhere’ through research by passionate people dedicated to Singapore’s economic success. I²R performs R&D in information, communications and media (ICM) technologies to develop holistic solutions across the ICM value chain. Our research capabilities are in information technology, wireless and optical communication networks, interactive and digital media, signal processing and computing. We seek to be the infocomm and media value creator that keeps Singapore ahead. For more information about I2R, please visit using the link below

Associated links

• Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)
• Universal Speech Translation Advanced Research Consortium (U-STAR)
• Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R)
• National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT)
• Online press kit

Associated files available for download

View/download the file 'Full PR global research translation app.pdf.