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translating spoken Chinese from audio file
Monday, February 17th, 2020 08:49 pmI got a strange voicemail in Chinese on my cellphone from the number 202-495-3793 (a Washington, DC area code). It's a short official-sounding recorded message in a female voice, with a simple musical tune in the background. (I like how the Chinese language, being tone-based, is itself melodic even without the music.)
I was curious as to what the message said, so I saved it to an audio file on my laptop. Then I opened Google Translate in the Chrome browser (the option for translating from audio / microphone input is only available in Chrome, not Firefox). The page's text input box has a microphone icon in the lower left that you click for it to start listening. But first you need to select the language; it won't auto-detect when using the mic input. Then I played the audio file.
The translating didn't work very well. I tried it several times. Mostly, it didn't recognize any words, and showed no output. A couple of times, it showed the following output. This is only a small portion of what was said:
Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi
Chinese Ambassador to the United States
But I'm not even sure that much of it is correct. In the audio, I can hear "Zhongguó zhù" at the very beginning, but not "mei dàshi" after it. Maybe that is from a different part of it. It's spoken so fast that I can't tell.. I do hear "shi" a few times but not sure about the rest.
I tried again and this time got:
Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi guan
中国驻美大使馆
Chinese Embassy in the United States
Zhongguó = China
dàshi guan = Embassy
I also tried playing back the recording at 2/3s speed, in hopes that would let Google Translate hear the words better. But it did not help.
Hum, this is sort of fun: Try to say Chinese sounding things and see what it translates to. But you have to click the mic to stop and restart in between, as otherwise it seems to output the same thing over and over again. ("No no no")
I seem to have learned how to say "China" (Zhongguó) pretty well! (But I doubt I'll remember it.)
Ah, in my trying to read "Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi guan", it instead translates it to "The beauty of life".
But I tested translating from me speaking German, and it translates that very well! I can hardly say anything that it doesn't understand! Even with my not-so-great speaking voice.
I was curious as to what the message said, so I saved it to an audio file on my laptop. Then I opened Google Translate in the Chrome browser (the option for translating from audio / microphone input is only available in Chrome, not Firefox). The page's text input box has a microphone icon in the lower left that you click for it to start listening. But first you need to select the language; it won't auto-detect when using the mic input. Then I played the audio file.
The translating didn't work very well. I tried it several times. Mostly, it didn't recognize any words, and showed no output. A couple of times, it showed the following output. This is only a small portion of what was said:
Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi
Chinese Ambassador to the United States
But I'm not even sure that much of it is correct. In the audio, I can hear "Zhongguó zhù" at the very beginning, but not "mei dàshi" after it. Maybe that is from a different part of it. It's spoken so fast that I can't tell.. I do hear "shi" a few times but not sure about the rest.
I tried again and this time got:
Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi guan
中国驻美大使馆
Chinese Embassy in the United States
Zhongguó = China
dàshi guan = Embassy
I also tried playing back the recording at 2/3s speed, in hopes that would let Google Translate hear the words better. But it did not help.
Hum, this is sort of fun: Try to say Chinese sounding things and see what it translates to. But you have to click the mic to stop and restart in between, as otherwise it seems to output the same thing over and over again. ("No no no")
I seem to have learned how to say "China" (Zhongguó) pretty well! (But I doubt I'll remember it.)
Ah, in my trying to read "Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi guan", it instead translates it to "The beauty of life".
But I tested translating from me speaking German, and it translates that very well! I can hardly say anything that it doesn't understand! Even with my not-so-great speaking voice.
