Language Telephone — Speech Translator
A "telephone game" that demonstrates speech translation — speak or type a phrase and watch it drift through 5 languages, then compare the original to the final result.
How It Works
Enter a phrase (by speaking or typing), and the demo translates it through a chain of 5 languages using built-in phrase dictionaries. Each step is visualized as a node in the chain, and you can hear the translation at each stage via speech synthesis.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Microphone input | Speak a phrase (Chrome/Edge, with live waveform) |
| Text input | Type a phrase (works in all browsers) |
| Translation chain | EN → ES → FR → DE → JA → EN |
| Listen buttons | Hear each translation via speech synthesis |
| Preset phrases | Try common phrases to see the drift effect |
The Concept
Real speech translation pipelines combine ASR (speech-to-text via Whisper), machine translation (LLM or NMT models), and TTS (text-to-speech). The "telephone effect" — where meaning drifts through multiple translations — illustrates why direct translation and context preservation are active research challenges.