Alvin@cup.portal.com (Alvin Henry White) (07/16/90)
The reason I want time change without pitch change is so that we can achieve the modern equivalent of inter-linear language translation on stereo audio channels. Such as, you have a computer look up a clue word in a second language, of your choice, thesaurus. Then you have the computer speech function determine how long it will take to synthesize the word in the original tongue. It then determines how long it would take to synthesize the clue word in the second language. Next, it applies time change without pitch change to the second language speech synthesis. and Voile. You hear the original song in one ear and the clue words, dubbed in the other ear, in time to the music. How's that for counterpoint. If the usenet goes to a multi- lingual text stream, the inter-linear dub would be cheaper and poorer than translation.
edhall@rand.org (Ed Hall) (07/17/90)
In article <31762@cup.portal.com> Alvin@cup.portal.com (Alvin Henry White) writes: >The reason I want time change without pitch change is so that we can achieve >the modern equivalent of inter-linear language translation on stereo audio >channels. Such as, you have a computer look up a clue word in a second >language, of your choice, thesaurus. Then you have the computer speech >function determine how long it will take to synthesize the word in the >original tongue. It then determines how long it would take to synthesize the >clue word in the second language. Next, it applies time change without pitch >change to the second language speech synthesis. and Voile. You hear the >original song in one ear and the clue words, dubbed in the other ear, in time >to the music. How are you going to handle languages with a different word order, like English and Japanese, or Spanish and German? Word-for-word translation would at least produce a large shift in meaning, if not result in gibberish. It just isn't that easy. Even if it were, how are you going to handle cases where the substitute-word has four times as many (or fewer) syllables as the original? A 4X speedup would render it unintelligably fast. A 4X slowdown would render many diphthongs inaudible. The most speedup or slowdown people can handle (with practice) is a bit over 2X, even with constant pitch. -Ed Hall edhall@rand.org