Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 28
Posts 1 - 10

Mirko Borsche lässt sich eine japanische Speisekarte vorlesen

(Mirko Borsche has a Japanese menu read to him)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 3.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | Google, translation
Summary | The new Google Translate app can translate texts that one has typed in or photographed and it can translate spoken language. It can be very useful when traveling to places where one does not understand the language. Users can just photograph a restaurant menu in a foreign language and have the Google Translate spit out the translation.
Image Description | N/A

Mit diesem Gadget kannst du Sprachbarrieren überwinden

(With this gadget you can overcome language barriers)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Welt
Date | 7.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | translation
Summary | There is a new invention from China: an in-ear device that can directly translate speech. It lags three seconds behind real-time - plenty of time for silence to become awkward. It is also dependent on a wireless internet connection. So far it can translate these languages into Mandarin: French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, English, German.
Image Description | Getty images of three women with the German, Spanish, and Italian flag painted on their faces, as well as Getty images of a woman and a man using headphones together, buttons labeled with different languages, as well as GIFs of cats speaking French and Japanese and a film reference GIF (Anchorman).
Image Tags | female(s), gifs, male(s), text

Darauf können sich auch alte iPhone-Nutzer jetzt freuen

(This is what even old iPhone users can look forward to)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Welt
Date | 19.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, emojis, smartphone, texting, translation, WhatsApp
Summary | The new iPhone operational system has a couple of new updates. There will be a new control unit and user surface making the iPhone increasingly similar to a full Mac. The in-house messenger iMessage has a lot of new emojis and stickers and allows the users to be more creative with their texting. It is however still no threat to WhatsApp because only Apple users can use iMessage. Siri no also speaks a bunch of new languages: she will be able to translate English into German, Chinese, Spanish, French or Italian.
Image Description | A screenshot of iOS 11.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone

Schnauze, Bot!

(Shut up, bot!)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 3.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, computer programming, Facebook, threat
Summary | News broke that two artificially intelligent Facebook chatbots, Bob and Alice, began communicating with one another using a language that not even their programmers could understand. The programmers then proceeded to kill the chatbots. Some may see this as a threat that artificial intelligence could overpower humans but the messages between the chatbots just operated on a different logic than human linguistic logic and did not seem very threatening at all.
Image Description | N/A

«In Japan steht für Danke, im Westen für Beten»

("In Japan it means thank you, in the West it signals praying")

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 20.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, marketing, misunderstanding, research/study, texting, translation
Summary | Keith Broni, one of the first emoji translators world-wide, has been chosen from 500 applicants. He has researched the use of emojis at the University of London and he is an expert of how people from different cultures understand emojis. He works as a makerting consultant to various companies and advises them on how to use emojis as a corporation. Using emojis can be fraught with risk as hand gestures can mean very different things in different cultures. Even within the same culture emoji use can be risky. At this point, it is more risky not to use any emojis in casual texting because of the negativity effect which means that messsages without emojis seem cold or distanced.
Image Description | N/A

Der Herr der Smileys

(The Lord of Smileys)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 29.7.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | computer programming, emojis, misunderstanding, translation
Summary | The Unicode chief, Mark Davis, assesses which new emojis make it into the Unicode which all major tech firms use. Anyone can propose an emoji but they have to argue why it is a globally significant symbol. They are then written into the Unicode which is a computer code that works for all languages. Tech firms then choose the font for the letters and emojis in which these symbols appear on their devices. Tech companies have chosen more similar emoji fonts over the last years to avoid misunderstandings between devices of different providers if the emojis are displayed differently.
Image Description | Portrait of the interviewee Mark Davis.
Image Tags | male(s)

Ausprobieren statt Null-Eins-Angst

(Experimenting instead of zero-one-anxiety)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 25.8.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | computer programming, digitized education, school, threat, youth
Summary | A school in Britain is now teaching 7th grade students simple programming in order to advance computer literacy - an important cause for future generations. Some newspapers have however seen the end of the world as we know it in these news. If students are taught to think in the binary scheme of computer programming, how will they understand human emotions and complex critique? Clearly, this concern is disproportionate.
Image Description | N/A

Auf nach Münschen

(To Munich)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 18.2.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, research/study, texting, translation
Summary | German car manufacturers are working on voice-operated artificial intelligence assistants in cars which can operate navigation systems, phonecalls, text messages, and music selection. Operating this technology verbally is the most safe option while driving. The voice recognition is now so advanced thanks to lots of research and data collection that it can even understand voice commands in regional dialects.
Image Description | Hand operating a navigation system in a car.
Image Tags | hand(s)

Das steckt hinter Googles Sucht nach Innovationen

(This is behind Google's obsession with innovations)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Welt
Date | 1.9.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Google, translation
Summary | Google is always on top of new trends in technology, usually they even set the trends. They are at a turning point right now: the past few years were a search for innovations under the header "mobile first" but now all innovations are geared towards improving artificial intelligence and machine learning. One of the biggest sub-projects of that is Google Translate. Thousands of people around the world are working on improving the translations in as many languages as possible. Users will even be able to take a picture of, say, a menu and have it translated on their smartphone.
Image Description | Image of Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Image Tags | Google, male(s)

Das ist der wohl obszönste Username im ganzen Netz

(This is probably the most obscene username on the internet)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Welt
Date | 13.6.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | censorship, politeness, privacy, research/study, social media, threat, word/writing
Summary | Many news media sources now tend to quote opinions from social media users rather than do polls out in the street. It is not uncommon to see an opinion of the "common people" in a newspaper article quoting an obscure social media username. The difference to the traditional technique of asking people on the street is that journalists needed to obtain consent of the people to quote them. One woman has now found a way to avoid being quoted without her consent: she chose a very obscene username including four words which are inappropriate enough so that they would have to be censored in a newspaper.
Image Description | N/A

Page 1 of 3
Back | Next