I have never been in Second Life, but I have heard people there make all kinds of objects.
The idea is to make a multilingual dictionary based on these objects, but also on actions (to illustrate verbs).
You type in "book" and your avatar is taken to a place somewhere in Second Life that shows a book in an unambiguous setting.
Or you search for "kissing", and you get a (prerecorded) scene of kissing avatars.
In Second Life you can activate objects and assign properties to them, I have heard. So it should be a piece of cake to embed a short audio .wav into it. Click the object, select your language and listen to its pronunciation.
That's it.
I have no experience in Second Life, so I don't know much about its audio-environment. Do people speak in Second Life, or is it only text-chatting?-- django, Jul 16 2007 I believe you are looking for this. Hieroglyphics_20Universal_20Translator [theircompetitor, Jul 16 2007] Clay Shirky: A story too good to check http://valleywag.co...to-check-221252.php [jutta, Jul 17 2007] Secondlife Voice Map http://secondlife.com/voicemap/ [reensure, Jul 17 2007] Second Life: The Plan for Voice http://blog.secondl...the-plan-for-voice/Hey, cool. I didn't know about this. But note pissed-off user comments... [jutta, Jul 17 2007] I looked up Second LIfe. I'm aghast! 8,122,035 members, spending a million USD.-- dentworth, Jul 17 2007 Django, I'm sorry, but I need to go off on a tangential rant about those numbers for a moment.
Membership in Second Life is free. (Building objects that persist is not, but you don't need to do that.) It may net you some spam invitations from other players, but it's relatively benign, so I encourage you to try it out. Get an account, download the client, spend about half an hour tweaking your shoulder/waist ratio, go fly around, try out the object creation mechanism, wander the vast, empty mall scape full of pretty textures and bad porn, and leave.
As part of the free membership, you get some "Linden $". There is an exchange rate between Linden $ and US$ - about 200-300 L$ per US$. So, that means that, for downloading the client and flying around a bit, Linden Labs has minted for me about $3's worth of currency - which I, like millions of others, can't be arsed to cash out. But you can see where the million-dollar/day economy comes in. If I buy a pretty black dress for L$200, I've just "spent" a US$ (which I never put into the system to begin with). Hooray, quick, call the press, etc.
The real value in the system is real estate. In June 2007, 928 "Islands" were added, with each Island selling for a little under $1700, plus $300/month. (There's then more reselling among the players, but this is money that fairly directly translates to actual value in terms of machines and operations.)
</tangent>
There's a "search" function in the game that ... well, finds spam with the word of your choice in it. So, this would be an improvement, and it is fairly possible - there is audio in the game, although it's mostly radio stations, and the (default) chat is text. I wouldn't want to give all the free work to another company, though; I'd rather help add animations to wikipedia, who already has the multilingual support and pronunciations!-- jutta, Jul 17 2007 Thinking back whistfully, I remember when Second Life was one building. Oh my.
The are several services that you can choose for translation if you sign on for a fee. Babbler is one I've heard of.-- reensure, Jul 17 2007 Reensure, what is the voice quality? Does it disturb the graphics or slow down the movements? Because if every object is going to be tagged with a voice-fragment, then it must be ok with the system.
How do you speak? Just with a microphone? Or is it some kind of text-to-voice translation?-- django, Jul 17 2007 Jutta, you know the technical aspects maybe. Any chance wikipedia and voice-enhanced 3D-objects made in SL will ever be connected?
Not that I would particularly see the added value, because wikipedia is very good as it is. But still, worth checking out the idea.-- django, Jul 17 2007 Wholly moley, [django]. I don't know, but then again, I haven't tried it.
Let me say that Secondlife (SL) is processor-heavy and nearly everything happening there produces lag. Various locations in SL offer you ways to reduce lag, such as to suggest you remove jewelry and unnecessary physical decorations such as big shoes and tattoos. I know you'll need a microphone, but I don't know the functionality of that microphone in terms of tagged objects, broadcast distance, volume control, or how speakers are identified other than maybe they'll be the ones dancing without stopping to pit-a-pat type on their laps. ;)
I suspect auditory and visual signals are streamed separately, so that each will have its own lag issues.-- reensure, Jul 17 2007 // suggest you remove jewelry and unnecessary physical decorations such as big shoes Heh. Second Life and the US Transport Security Administration both...-- jutta, Jul 17 2007 random, halfbakery