If you're a technologist looking for ways to save the world, enabling communication between people of different countries is about as important a task as you can find. The web was a good first step, but language is still a barrier. Being unable to communicate with someone dehumanizes them. Automatic translation isn't going to automatically bring about world peace (and it isn't going to automatically enable us to transcend cultural barriers), but it's an enormously important next step.
I criticize Google and Microsoft a lot, and I will continue to do so when necessary, but I applaud their efforts toward this goal, especially since there's so little financial incentive to do so. Even if this product is as limited in practice as I suspect, it's heartening to see such crucial technology mature.
Is all voice in a room with a person wearing Google Buds transmitted to the cloud??
Isn't that prohibited and eavesdropping onto unsuspecting citizens?
I mean it's not just temporarily processed and immediately deleted afterwards. That's Google trying to get WiFi SSIDs, (Satellite, Street, Indoor, Face, Object) Pictures, Voices, real-time Geo-Location of consumers and whatnot.. it's getting off the hand..
I was shocked when I first discovered that my "ok, Google" conversations were stored in the cloud indefinitely with a badly designed and hidden Web-UI that allows "deletion" (whatever that legally means with Google-speak).
I know that this is a point that is raised a lot of times, but if we think about it ---
isn't cloud connectivity almost a necessity for things to work as well as they do?
Particularly, Google's game is machine learning... it cannot do it if it doesn't have the data that it does (e.g. Google Now won't be able to connect the dots between my buying a hotel room and my buying plane tickets... conveniently having location directions to hotel just when I get done at the airport, etc. etc.).
Consider that languages are an always-evolving entity. I'm barely 30 and I have seen idioms and sayings fall and rise within the last decade. Certainly it is true that the best translation of some 20-word sentence would be different if it is done 10 or maybe even 5 years apart.
And of course it is a matter of fact that we all talk about the same things... e.g. some shooting occurred at some place recently, that means people will be talking about that thing and looking it up. It means we might say a name of a place or a hotel that we haven't before said before... the translating service will be better off if it has some awareness of it and then has a bias for voice transcription with cultural awareness, it'll work better that way. For Google to do its best job when it comes to translation, it needs to be connected to all of us, it has to be with us in the Cloud.
It’s absolutely possible to do machine learning based tasks without sending all data to an ad network that builds a profile of your entire life to serve you ads.
Apple does a lot of on-device work, and anonymises what does need to talk to their backend for (eg map directions).
The problem is, google can’t adopt that pattern even if they want to (which they don’t) because their whole push for years has been about very thin (software wise) clients talking to a largely web based set of google services.
The question is not does it need cloud, the question is, is it worth it. When you send an audio stream to Google, you are imposing your answer to that question on everybody else in the room.
Or let any third party [view a photo | talk to you on the phone | listen to a voice memo ] with everybody else in the room. We already have answers to those "worth it" questions, largely.
The more important question is whether a third party can use that data to cause you harm, and if that's a concern, I'm afraid the only real solution is to limit your ability to be included in that data.
Not necessarily… all life works without a cloud doesn’t it? You can certainly realize your example with a completely local AI. You may need the cloud for training (at the moment) but not for day to day execution!
> Is all voice in a room with a person wearing Google Buds transmitted to the cloud??
No, of course not. Ignoring for a moment that Translate works perfectly fine offline already this would only ever be transmitting anything after you hit the button. It's not passively transmitting everything it hears to the cloud. Even if you ignore the privacy implications of that it'd drain the battery crazy fast.
"And this year’s Pixel will take advantage of the phone’s always-on microphones to listen for music (not just the phrase “OK Google”) and display what you’re listening to on the screen, even if it’s something on the radio."
Pretty sure it can't do that without at least transmitting audio fingerprints to the cloud passively...
Idea: a device that sniffs wifi and bluetooth MAC addresses and warns you when there's a Google Pixel2 in earshot...
(Note: That's the Pixel2, not the earbuds, but for the "magic" to work, the earbud wearers will have one of those in their pockets...)
Really? I'd love to know how they do that? Can you _really_ cram a useable sized db of popular music fingerprints into something small enough to store locally on a phone these days?
I work for google but have no clue what underlying tech is being used here. But I have some familiarity with audio fingerprinting, so I thought I'd comment.
Using a not particularly efficient but reliable fingerprinting algorithm such as http://www.ismir2002.ismir.net/proceedings/02-FP04-2.pdf, you need 2.6kbits/sec for the fingerprint. Popular songs tend to be short, so lets say 3:30 per song on average. That works out to about 70K per song, or 70MB per 1000 songs. But compression and/or other sorts of encoding cleverness could massively reduce this number. Bottom line is that it wouldn't be hard to store thousands of fingerprints given a few hundred megabytes of storage (out of 64GB or more).
You don't need then entire song for a fingerprint, and the MusicBrainz (MetaBrainz) project has long been supported by Google.
I couldn't find anything which said how big their db is, but you could do some artist/song popularity smarts to figure out the tracks a user is most likely to listen to.
But to constantly be searching through fingerprints for every sound? I'd be interested to see what Googles solution to this may be.
I mean, would that satisfy a majority of needs, even? When I use Shazam, it's usually to identify a weird instrumental or otherwise obscure song that I've never heard before.
If you do the explicit ask for what song is playing then it starts recording and sends it to the cloud just like Shazam. Presumably that recognizes far more than just 10k most popular songs.
This is just passive recognition which can have much less coverage since you aren't relying on it.
I'm a bit late, but I watched the announcement for this feature and they explicitly said that nothing was sent to that cloud to determine what song it was.
I remember this stood out to me, because that was a large concern of mine when I first heard about the feature. I respected that they went out of their way to make this point.
She said that it is based on machine learning, and something like a database of "audio samples". it uses the samples to figure it out, I guess.
> the earbud wearers will have one of those in their pockets
Use a recording app start recording the mic on your phone, put it in your pocket, and then talk at normal conversation volumes. It's not gonna pick up much, to say nothing of a person on the other side of the room.
> Isn't that prohibited and eavesdropping onto unsuspecting citizens?
I would assume the privacy expectations of public/private spaces used for photography also apply here. If you happen to be in the frame when I take a photo, am I prohibited from uploading the image to Facebook or Google Photos?
Depends on whom you take a photo off, where and from where.
It's a complicated matter juristically, but the morale is easy. Don't take a photograph of someone visible in your photo without their consent. If so, at least don't upload it anywhere public or online.
In Germany there's a law giving you the copyright on your own photo[1], it's difficult in the USA and less difficult in other countries[2]
EDIT:
Voice recordings are practically illegal in the public without consent in Germany[3] and also in the USA [4][5].
From [2]:
"Should the subjects not attempt to conceal their private affairs, their actions immediately become public to a photographer using normal photographic equipment."
Well, I think the obvious way to solve this is simply to make it obvious the translation is occuring with a third party (who may do anything with the data). I think this is still fantastic technology even if it is limited to public conversations.
If you believe in Mark Twain's famous line "travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness", and if these earbuds promote travel by lowering the discomfort of communication, then you can expect that the earbuds would help reduce things like racial conflict.
Local sectarian conflicts are definitely a problem in lots of places, but a bigger problem in the US right now is that lots of folks never meet anyone outside their own culture. I'm not sure making it easier to communicate will help (lots of people don't even have passports...), but maybe it will, and I don't see how it could hurt.
I don't think so. We treated American communists with pretty much the same contempt --not that we were not right in condemning the ideology, which as we know leads to massive deaths due to ideology -gulags, cultural revolutions, etc., to reach "purity" but still, it's evident speaking a common language does not prevent us from treating others ill.
We see it from new-Nazis as well as antifa --they actually hate people with mainstream views and, for the most part, we're the same culture, writ large.
If Joe Sixpack and Mohammed can communicate with each other they won't sit idly by while the fear-mongers use the other to justify terrorism/enforced liberty importation. At least in theory.
This would seem easily disproven by any country that has sectarian conflicts where both sides speak the same language. Or for instance, racial division in America.
I'm not sure what the argument here is. That the US would be better off if Republicans and Democrats spoke mutually unintelligible languages? By what logic does it make sense to say "group A and group B are at odds; group A and group B speak the same language; therefore we disprove that speaking the same language will ever resolve anything"?
>If Joe Sixpack and Mohammed can communicate with each other they won't sit idly by while the fear-mongers use the other to justify terrorism/enforced liberty importation
is easily disproven by the fact that this still happens all the time among people who speak the same language. Speaking a different language doesn't help communication obviously, but speaking the same language doesn't magically remove prejudice and hatred.
Saying that example disproves the grandparent is being pedantic.
What they were saying was that "if Joe Sixpack and Mohammed can communicate with each other, [more often] they won't sit idly by while the fear-mongers [...]"
The counter-example of single-language conflict ignores the larger forest of language being a key leveller of cultural differences (i.e. necessary but not sufficient), as well as gp's obviously statistical rather than absolute example.
It's pretty clear he or she wasn't saying that 'as long as two people speak the same language, there will never be conflict between them.'
That this is some wishful thinking that the “differences” between incompatible parts of cultures are just language barriers.
It’s funny that everyone brings up Muslims while one is likely to have harder times finding English speakers in many parts of Europe than in many parts of the Middle East.
But somehow you don’t dehumanize French or Italian ruralists?
> Name one current conflict in which language and the inability to communicate is a barrier.
It'd be easier to list the wars in which language wasn't a barrier. Excluding the category of civil wars, there aren't many wars where opposing sides largely speak a common language.
Well, that's a pretty big one, wouldn't you say? Some of the biggest, hairiest and most bloody conflicts have been civil.
The Syrian government and the rebels speaks the same language, and so do most of IS. The Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda speaks the same languages. North and South Korea speaks the same language. Croatia/Serbia/Bosnia speak (almost) the same language. The jews in Nazi Germany spoke german.
If you're trying to get to a theory that conflicts are primarily or even significantly fueled by an inability to communicate, you can't just hand-wave civil wars away.
In-group/out-group conflicts is a powerful force and it cuts a lot deeper than language.
Oh, ferchrissakes, you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel now. The OP did a 'name one' gambit, and I pointed out that there were plenty.
Now, I'm not sure if you know this, but in WWII, the Germans fought more than just their own German-speaking Jewish population. They fought the French (don't speak German), the British (don't speak German), the Americans (don't speak German), the Polish (don't speak German), the Belgians (don't speak German), the Soviets (a collection of people, none of whom speak German), the Danish (don't speak German), the Norwegians (don't speak German), the Canadians (don't speak German), the Australians (don't speak German), the Dutch (DO speak German... but their assisting colonies didn't), the Indians (don't speak German), the Kiwis (don't speak German), the South Africans (don't speak German), the Greeks (don't speak German), the Chinese a little bit (don't speak German), the Rhodesians (don't speak German), some Yugoslavians (don't speak German), the Kenyans (don't speak German), an assortment of smaller, lesser-involved nations such as Costa Rica (also don't speak German) and, towards the end of the war, Italy... which doesn't speak German.
Not to mention that on the eve of the war, there were only about 200,000 jews left in Germany - most emigrated in the half-decade beforehand to distant places like the US. The 6M jews that were killed in the Holocaust were drawn from all over Europe - about half of them from Poland. It wasn't 6M German-speaking jews that died in the camps.
WWII claimed the lives of over 60M people, and 200k people is a rounding error on this number. It's drawing a ridiculously long bow to claim it as a civil war because a few of the victims lived in-country.
> you can't just hand-wave civil wars away.
Again, I wasn't. I was responding to the OP's 'name one'. It wasn't even a 'name one where it's a cause', just 'name one where it's a barrier'.
Agreed. I do think the tech is 'cool', though. I was recently in a location where nobody spoke English, outside of a few words like 'hello', etc. We communicated a lot nonverbally, quite easily. We laughed together, attempted to speak each others language(which led to more laughing), did things together, ate together, etc. Sure we couldn't sit around and discuss politics or philosophy, but I found that situation more endearing oddly.
Communication enables social inclusivity which brings people together. I went to a large university and many exchange students would gravitate towards their own groups during social situations. Picture a group of individuals from $X country huddled together in a corner of a bar for a couple hours not able to talk to anyone else.
As far as I read in no way shape or form were they talking about 'conflict' ie war which is what you seem to be implying?
War is a blip.
This device isn't going to translate mosquito (for now, I'm sure at some stage it will, the possibilities are exciting for apps that analyze sounds around you)
Yeah. In Israel we have an NGO that selects the most inflammatory stuff that gets said on Arab news media about Israel and the Jews, and translates it into Hebrew and English. Honestly, it would be far better for Arab-Israeli relations if that shit was left untranslated.
Imagine if instead of that, Israeli kids all had Arab friends they chatted with online every day while playing video games. That's the sort of thing this technology could be used for.
There are plenty of Arabs living in Israel, and last time I've checked all Israeli kids study Arabic in School as a 3rd language.
This is a very rosy sentiment but it's unrealistic not only because of the existing cultural differences and bias, but also because of the premise of the multiplayer aspect, play DOTA, BF or HALO without muting other users and tell me how it goes.
I'm pretty sure most middle easterners including Israelis don't need Google's magical earbuds to understand the meaning of "ya ibn sharmuta"...
I used to play lots of Gears of War without muting the microphone and made several friends. All of them spoke English. I've learned a few other languages at school, but none of them well enough to make friends while playing a game online.
I guess you're talking about MEMRI- a pure propaganda/ PR operation for Israel, founded by former Mossad agents, that often purposefully mistranslates the quotes to put arabs in the worst possible light:
In practice, it's doubtful that this feature of the product will be that useful.
Google Translate still fails at very basic grammatical constructs, despite all the deep learning machinery they recently upgraded to (one of my favorite examples being the extremely simplistic "my cousin and her wife", which a 5 year old would properly parse, and yet gets erroneously translated to e.g. "mon cousin et sa femme" in French, when it should be "ma cousine et sa femme" (inferred from the her)). For corpuses in languages that are closely related (e.g. Swedish and English which they showed on stage), you generally get fairly usable results, which are acceptable for getting the general meaning of a news article but would get frustrating quickly for a real life conversation. For languages that are not closely related, the tech is just plain unusable.
People who need to work with multiple languages professionally will never use this - too many nuances would be lost, and too many mistakes would be made. The UN is not getting rid of its army of translators any time soon.
On the other end of the spectrum, people who punctually need to use a foreign language (e.g. because they are visiting a country for a few weeks) don't have that much of a pain point. When my French parents visit foreign countries, they communicate with the locals in broken English and by pointing and gesturing. Sure, there might be a bit of friction there, but there's nothing that this approach doesn't get them that this product would. Not to mention that speaking to someone while wearing earbuds looks plain rude, and that you can only really have a 2 way conversation if they also are wearing these earbuds, which 99.9% of the world won't.
It certainly makes for a very cool demo, but as a product it doesn't really have much of a place.
> there might be a bit of friction there, but there's nothing that this approach doesn't get them that this product would
There absolutely is. I'm fluent in English, and in a visit to Japan a couple months ago I found myself in a restaurant with a waiter that didn't speak English, and an issue with my credit card that she couldn't explain to me. After several attempts at communicating in other ways, I just opened Google Translate on the phone and we were able to have a spoken conversation much like the one you saw in the presentation.
Genuinely curious then: are you interested by this product? What would it let you do that your phone doesn't let you do? Do you feel like the interaction would have been better if mediated by audio only earbuds instead of a phone with a display?
While on vacation in New Orleans I became friends with two Brazilians staying at my hostel. Only one of them is confident in their English, the other speaks it haltingly, and I speak no Portuguese. They've invited me to come spend time with them next year, which is little time for me to become a fluent speaker. Something like this looks like it might allow me a much greater chance of understanding and being understood by all of their friends.
I use Facebook's translation of comments a fair bit and it enables me to usually get at least the gist of what's being said - and sometimes a clear view of it. If that level of accuracy could be applied to in-person audio it could be a lot more useful than not having it.
The point is that an imperfect translation engine can be adequate for making sense of written text in an asynchronous way (if one sentence is confusing your eyes can jump back to the previous one to try to guess the connection, etc.), but be near-unusable for on the fly translation of a real world conversation. Context matters a lot.
Then your argument is actually that they won't be able to do real time audio translation to a similar level of accuracy to Google Translate. The comment I replied to did not make that argument.
The point I am making that you are referring to is that while you may be able to understand a piece of text in a foreign language translated visually by Google Translate (because your eyes can jump forward/backwards in the text, reread a confusing sentence, you can pause for a second and try to make sense of it, etc.), if the exact same text were translated in audio form, as part of a live, 1-1 conversation, you wouldn't be able to make sense of a lot of it because you can't do all the things I just listed which help deal with imperfect translations.
It's the same thing as if I read you a very complicated scientific paper you're not familiar with out loud, versus you reading it yourself. You will understand more in the latter situation.
(imagine if we had this back and forth in 2 different languages using Google earbuds, instead of over a textual medium :-)
I don't agree. No-one knowing you're using such translation is going to talk to you in a normal conversational manner. They'll talk to you in a simplified, slowed-down fashion. And having such translation ability in such a situation would still be better than the alternatives.
If you're interested in helping with disaster scenarios in Spanish speaking countries, you would most likely be better served by a few months of duolingo (or other language learning course/app). It'd be cheaper, more useful for you in general (e.g. you would also be able to make sense of written text, which this product alone does not cover), and you wouldn't be reliant on a charged phone + charged earbuds + cellular connection, which might be a hard trio of requirements to fulfill in disaster scenarios.
(These considerations don't address the fact that there are most likely many other people who do speak Spanish and are willing to volunteer, and assistance organizations would probably prefer those to someone with Google's latest gadget)
The translation overlay on camera feed feature of Google Translate is great, and it does not suffer from most of the problems I outlined in my original post. It is for a very different kind of use case though (it's more about solving the problem of "what does this menu/street sign say?", rather than trying to offer full conversation live translation)
This is absurd. There are Spanish (and Tagolog, and Chinese, and...)-speaking people all over the world who don't speak the local language. There is no army of translators available at every location in the world all the time. There are plenty of disasters that don't destroy wireless networking connectivity.
I would add that, to a lesser degree, being unable to communicate with someone in person dehumanizes them.
Commenting online isn't the same as hearing their voice and standing in front of them. That makes a huge different in how some responds and stops a lot of hate and trolling.
Sure, but I'd argue that it's societal unfamiliarity with the ramifications of mass communication (anonymous or otherwise) that causes this effect. The interface to this site may imply that this comment here is a response to you, and it even feels that way in my head sometimes, but in reality all of our comments are publicly broadcasted to the thousands and thousands of people on this site (hi, everyone!). That's a bizarre effect of the web that even veterans often allow themselves to forget.
In the past, the people who needed to understand the difference between private and public speech were those who spoke for a living: orators, salesmen, politicians. Yet the power granted by the internet has made this knowledge crucial for everyone, but nowhere is it really taught.
And even though this dynamic is enabled by the internet, the internet is not limited to it. One-on-one communication is quite possible. Video chat becomes more accessible every year. Even sites like ChatRoulette and Omegle were once great ways to have actual, honest conversations with strangers (still are, if you can wade through the sea of literal wankers). This conversation has given me a lot of food for thought of what it would look like to make one-on-one video chat a core feature of public forums like Reddit.
I think there was a research talking about the emotional value of instant messaging(close to zero emotional value), a phone call(some emotional value), and face to face conversation(full value).
as for video chat - they also diminish the emotional experience(trust), because of lack of eye-contact. but once you offer full eye contact and body language, for ex. via telepresence, this improves dramatically, probably very close to real-life conversation.
So how do we create such a system fit for consumers ? and since text, etc is more convinient and addictive, can we design something that consumers will love to use ?
While this specific feature, at least for now, is Pixel exclusive, Google Translate itself still is completely free, and usable even without an account by anyone anywhere. It's hard to see the financial incentive to provide unlimited translations to anyone in the world for free.
These giant tech companies definitely a lot of shady and ambiguous stuff, but I still think we should commend them when they put resources in these other techs that aren't necessarily money makers, but provide a net plus for humanity. It's clear that these projects are being funded by money made in other parts of Google, such as their ad business.
It's similar to how BuzzFeed is mostly a trashy website, but once in a while they will come up with well researched thorough articles. It's clear that their shitty front page is a fund for them to achieve greater things.
Google Translate is a great product, but not monetizing it directly doesn't mean they do it out of the goodness of their heart. It is in their best interest to have access to as much information as possible no matter the language, and in that context a powerful translator is a priority, there is no way around it, and that is a massive financial incentive. That it also provides a great experience to keep its users loyal to their ecosystem is also a great financial incentive.
Also, don't underestimate taking away revenue sources from your competitors. If your competitor competes with you at A, but makes money at B, then taking away that B revenue stream affects their ability to compete with you at A as well.
There's Yandex which operates Russia's largest search engine (65% market share) which also runs Yandex Translate [0]. There's also Microsoft Translator [1], and Microsoft owns Bing, though MS Translator is a little different than Google Translate / Yandex Translate.
I find the free Google Translate, on iOS, to be one of my absolute favorite tools when traveling. The camera OCR translate feature is almost like magic.
I used it on my Pixel in a recent trip to Japan and it was a life saver. From translating signs and bus schedules, to communicating with a waiter that didn't speak English about an issue with my credit card.
Google translate is... iffy. Here's an example from this morning, where I asked a colleague about how the mooncakes were at last night's mid-Autumn festival:
were the mooncakes good last night? -> google translate -> 月饼好吗昨晚好吗？
月饼好吗昨晚好吗？ -> google translate -> Would you like me last night?
I ended up forming my own question, which was slightly wrong - my colleague asked 你是要说好吃吗? ("did you mean to say 'tasty'?") which I threw into el goog for a laugh, and got in return: "Are you going to be delicious?"
So either google translate is a bit iffy (still amazing, but iffy) or mooncakes are some sort of aphrodisiac and I'm not understanding that :)
> It's hard to see the financial incentive to provide unlimited translations to anyone in the world for free.
More communication = more trade, more market penetration = more money floating around. It's not a direct incentive, but it's there.
I worked on this feature and just want to clarify that it isn't Pixel exclusive; it works on any Android phone running M or newer. It is exclusive to the Pixel Buds, though.
Sorry, my information was out of date since I switched projects a while ago. Supporting all M+ phones was the original plan, but after observing some severe bluetooth audio bugs on certain phones, the team decided to support Pixel only for now to derisk the launch.
Then why does this footnote exist on the google store?
See the last sentence:
¹The Google Assistant on Google Pixel Buds is only available on Android and requires an Assistant-enabled Android device and data connection. Data rates may apply. For available Assistant languages and minimum requirements go to g.co/pixelbuds/help. Requires a Google Account for full access to features. Google Translate on Google Pixel Buds is only available on Pixel.
We did explore using standard protocols in order to support third party headsets. The most natural solution would be to listen for AT+BVRA (voice recognition command), which most headsets generate after some button is held down for a couple seconds. It didn't fit with our desired UX, though. We wanted a hold-while-talking UX, rather than hold for a couple seconds, wait for a beep, then release and start talking.
We thought about listening for AVRCP key events to detect when a certain button was pressed and released -- probably play/pause, which seems to be the most prominent button on most headsets. It would have been hacky, though, and we ran into several problems. For one thing, a lot of headsets power off if the play/pause button is held down for several seconds.
We also had concerns about audio quality with third party headsets, especially those which didn't support modern versions of SCO (which introduced new codecs with 16khz support and other improvements), or with poor antennas leading to high packet loss (SCO is a lossy protocol, so we still get some speech and attempt to translate it, but accuracy suffers). We were concerned that all accuracy problems would make Google Translate look bad, even if the headset was to blame.
The problem that the Pixel Buds integration aims to solve is that it gets cumbersome for two people to hand a phone back and forth. With the new UX, one person can use the phone while the other uses Pixel Buds for the duration of the conversation.
I think what he was saying is just move the "button" on the headphones to a button on the phone, because they are already holding it. Then the headphones can just be in a normal "audio call" mode, and the phone button triggers the translation engine to stream data...
I don't think this refutes the point; Google's core competency is selling ads, not selling babelfish, and 0% of their executives believe that it will ever be so. Remember that Google shut down Google Reader for having only a few million users and no path towards profitability. Back around the Google Plus initiative it was reported that Google Translate was a hair's width from the chopping block due to providing no financial value to the company, saved only by extreme defensive reaction from internal users (thanks, whoever you are!).
Maybe an advanced version of the translator could translate ideological positions as well as literal language. A conservative person conversing with a liberal person could have their "I don't believe it's my responsibility to subsidize others' healthcare" instantly translated to "I think healthcare should be federally funded from tax revenue".
This is terribly inaccurate - we have to remember to step outside our tech bubble and understand that in-person interactions are drastically different than comments on facebook or the web. I can despise people's views and like them individually.
Right, which is why promoting communication between individuals from different cultures via translation services won't necessarily noticeably improve relations between those cultures as a whole.
You can have friends in other countries and still happily go to war against those barbarians/heretics/whatever-your-justification-is, and keep telling yourself that you are doing it just as much for them as for yourself, even if they might currently disagree.
I have a very close friend, if you bring up the topic of abortion and don't drop it that could be the end of it very quickly. Some people are very identified with their political positions.
I hope this actually works, but I'm very skeptical.
Very recently I went to a resort in the Dominican Republic, where the main language is Spanish. Most waiting staff spoke good English, so everything was fine, until one of the people refilling the mini bar came in with a present and started ranting in Spanish. My first instinct was to grab google translate, do speech to text and then translate. Together, speech to text and translate were quite useless, probably because of the speed at which he spoke and possibly the accent.
I completely agree that this is a nice step. I doubt, however, that it will be anything more than a cool gimmick (in most cases), because of my recent experience.
I like that tech very much; but I also think we ought to learn how to understand others POV, and not assume too much about their personality, experience, reactions ..
I criticize Google and Microsoft a lot, and I will continue to do so when necessary, but I applaud their efforts toward this goal, especially since there's so little financial incentive to do so. Even if this product is as limited in practice as I suspect, it's heartening to see such crucial technology mature.