Microsoft Breakthrough Speaks Mandarin With Your Voice [VIDEO]

Speech recognition, as it relates to software, isn’t what one might call a perfect science. There are still bugs and glitches, even in the best transcription software out there. It’s difficult to accurately determine what someone is actually saying at any given time, let alone having a computer try to do all that for you. That’s why Microsoft's recent demonstration is so impressive.

Not only did it manage to show off a decent automatic transcription of the speech given, but it then translated that into spoken Mandarin using the speaker's own voice.

Assuming that this only continues to improve, the implications for this kind of machine translation everywhere are enormous. Using the speaker's own voice ensures a certain level of familiarity and cadence, whereas a translator acts as a conduit that attempts to mimic these things. It won't be perfect, but it'll be usable.

Microsoft's Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid demonstrates this somewhat mind-boggling advancement in the video above. From what you have seen so far, what do you think about the technology? Tell us in the comments.