We teach things to understand your language - does it sound normal?

English translation: Teaching technology to understand you

GLOSSARY ENTRY (DERIVED FROM QUESTION BELOW)

English term or phrase:	We teach things to understand your language - does it sound normal?
Selected answer:	Teaching technology to understand you
Entered by:	Patrick Dotterer

13:39 Aug 4, 2005

English language (monolingual) [PRO]
Marketing - Electronics / Elect Eng

English term or phrase: We teach things to understand your language - does it sound normal?

Our company is in the development of speech recognition technology. This technology enables user to manage computers and embedded devices by voice commands.
We would like to use a new slogan. Please, advise if a phrase "We teach things to understand your language" sounds well in English? By THINGS we mean not computers only, but all the electronic devices (phones, TV-sets, voice recorders, microwave ovens, elevators, etc.).

Alexiv KudoZ activity Questions: 7 (none open) (2 without valid answers) Answers: 0
Local time: 22:50

Teaching technology to understand you

Explanation:
From a marketing perspective, the simpler a slogan is, the better it is going to be (typically). Another possible way you could word if you want to go more towards the original is We teach technology to understand you. The only thing of note, though, is that in English marketing, it's not always required to put in all of the pronouns. Since your company is wide-ranging, the slogan should be short and simple to allow relevance throughout your business/products.

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Note added at 2005-08-04 14:20:11 (GMT)
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Another note, regarding my use of the term \"technology\" in lieu of \"devices\". Native English here, and devices just didn\'t appeal to me. I feel it can be wide ranging and can apply to anything from medical devices to torture devices. A can opener is a device. Something that can be voice activated, in my opinion, is technology...

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Note added at 2005-08-04 14:21:05 (GMT)
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Another note, regarding my use of the term \"technology\" in lieu of \"devices\". Native English here, and devices just didn\'t appeal to me. I feel it can be wide ranging and can apply to anything from medical devices to torture devices. A can opener is a device. Something that can be voice activated, in my opinion, is technology...

Selected response from:

Scott Evans
Local time: 14:50

Grading comment

4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer

SUMMARY OF ALL EXPLANATIONS PROVIDED

5 +9

Teaching technology to understand you

Scott Evans

4 +3

We teach...

Kurt Porter

5 -1

voice-enabling technology for you

Roland Grefer

see explanation

Mihaela Brooks

we teach machines to understand your language

Refugio

We train devices to react to your language

Michael Fratus

4 -2

we teach devices to understand your language

flipendo

Discussion entries: 5

Answers

32 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): -2

we teach things to understand your language - does it sound normal? we teach devices to understand your language

Explanation:
OR: we teach devices to speak /think /communicate in your language. They speak your language. We teach them your language.

flipendo
Local time: 22:50
Works in field
Native speaker of:

Greek

38 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): +9

Teaching technology to understand you

Scott Evans
Local time: 14:50
PRO pts in category: 4

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)

agree

Lindsay Sabadosa (X): I like this one. If the asker really want to keep in "language" this option allows that as well. (Personally I like it better without though.)

44 mins

-> Thank you!

agree

Elizabeth Lyons: You have summarized many important points about English language (esp USA) marketing - excellent response imo : )

46 mins

-> Thanks, Elizabeth... I do quite a bit of marketing here in the states so I've always got to explain these sorts fo things to clients (and hopefully they listen) :-)

agree

Armorel Young: That's really good - I fully agree with the need to steer clear of both "things" and "devices"

1 hr

-> Thanks, Amorel!

agree

jennifer newsome (X)

1 hr

-> Thanks, Jennifer!

agree

cmwilliams (X): Very good. I wouldn't use things or devices.

1 hr

-> Thanks!

agree

Sonia Geerlings: sounds great

2 hrs

-> Thank you, Sonia ;-)

disagree

Roland Grefer: While I agree with your use of "technology" and suggested simplification, I 'd stay away from any type of slogan that may be construed as overtly misleading such as one alleging a rational (or at least artificial intelligence) capability ("understand").

2 hrs

-> Good answer - My use of "understand" was based upon the initial request. I tend to think, though, that the implication of AI is dependent upon the target market. General population is not going to jump to an "AI" conclusion, IMHO.

agree

flipendo: You are right. "Technology" is great, but again, isn't it a bit too general. I think it also depends on the kind of technology this company develops.

3 hrs

-> Thanks!

agree

Madeleine MacRae Klintebo

6 hrs

-> Thank you!

agree

Alfa Trans (X)

1 day 16 hrs

-> Thanks!

agree

Saleh Chowdhury, Ph.D.

2 days 2 hrs

-> Thanks!

7 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): +3

we teach things to understand your language - does it sound normal? We teach...

Explanation:
We teach your devices to understand you.

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Note added at 1 hr 32 mins (2005-08-04 15:11:12 GMT)
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Then I would go with:

We teach our devices to understand your language.

For some reason, things doesn\'t work for me. Devices sounds more up-scale.

Kurt Porter
Local time: 00:50
Native speaker of: English

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)

agree

Michael Bailey

4 mins

-> Thank you, Michael.

agree

Bianca Jacobsohn: Perfect ;)

25 mins

-> Thank you, Bianca.

agree

flipendo: Though, I wouldn't use "your" as we may also be talking about devices you intend to use, ones that are intended to serve you but you do not just yet own them.

27 mins

-> Thank you. It would still work in advertising, as the company is trying to get you to buy them....it's the "soft sell." :) :)

agree

jennifer newsome (X)

1 hr

-> Thank you, jennifer

agree

Kevin Kelly

2 hrs

-> Thank you, Kevin.

disagree

Roland Grefer: I 'd stay away from any type of slogan that may be construed as overtly misleading such as one alleging a rational (or at least artificial intelligence) capability ("understand").

2 hrs

-> Thank you, Roland.

disagree

Mihaela Brooks: How can you 'teach '' inanimate to understand something?

11 hrs

-> It's called advertising....you say what you want to get your message across.

2 hrs confidence:

peer agreement (net): -1

we teach things to understand your language voice-enabling technology for you

Explanation:
Using the term "voice-enabling" illustrates the aspect of the spoken word involved in the technology pretty clearly. Generalizing the devices into "technology" would summarize things reasonably well, since said devices are specific implementations of technology.

Roland Grefer
Local time: 15:50
Native speaker of:

German,

English

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)

neutral

Scott Evans: I agree, but "enabling" is one of those words that doesn't roll off the tongue easily. On the other hand, our only other option with this would be "voice enabled" which is also rough. We also lose the "teaching" aspect of the original phrase this way.

19 mins

-> As Alexiv pointed out, covering all inanimate stuff is important (technology) as well as the voice recognition aspect, which is limited to certain commands. The above slogan could start "Developing voice-...', shifting focus to the development aspect.

disagree

Kurt Porter: I agree with tsmart. Not sure "voice-enabling technology for you" jumps out at the consumer and it underscores the company's development efforts.,

35 mins

-> The bigger question is how much attention they want to bring to their development efforts versus their implementations. If they want to stress the development effort, I'd agree with you wholeheartedly. All depends on their slogan's intended focus.

11 hrs confidence:

we teach things to understand your language - does it sound normal? see explanation

Explanation:
You cannot "teach" an inanimate - in casu - THINGS.

You can DEVELOP/CREATE technology / product = make something new and usually improved

options:
- our technology understands your language
- we develop "voice-enabling technology" - as Ronald mentioned

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Note added at 11 hrs 40 mins (2005-08-05 01:20:02 GMT)
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I apologize..I typed Ronald instead of Roland @ GSSG

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Note added at 11 hrs 54 mins (2005-08-05 01:33:28 GMT)
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- we created the technology that understands your language

Mihaela Brooks
Canada
Local time: 15:50
Native speaker of:

Romanian

1 day 7 hrs confidence:

we teach things to understand your language - does it sound normal? we teach machines to understand your language

Explanation:
+

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Note added at 1 day 7 hrs 55 mins (2005-08-05 21:34:59 GMT)
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To Roland and Mihaela: Teach is a metaphor.

<<So how are you going to make machines understand?

That\'s the tricky part. We don\'t fully understand how people understand words, meaning and context, so it\'s a very difficult task to make machines understand what words mean.

One way to approach the problem is to make special \"tags\" called ontologies. These are rather like dictionaries.

You can build an ontology around particular words, which help computers to decide what the words means.

Imagine that you had to read a Shakespearian play. Every so often there might be words that you come across that you don\'t understand. So you can stick on a \"post it\" note to the page, and go look up the meaning of the word in a dictionary, and write it on the post it.

You keep on doing this every time you come across a word that you don\'t understand. At the end, you have a play with lots of tags on it, but you should understand it much better.

Similarly with web pages, or words in a document, we can attach tags to these which explain or give more information about the meaning of the word.

When the computer finds a match between the meaning that you were looking for, and the meanings of the tagged web pages, then you are more likely to have the right information.

If we make our ontologies well enough, then the machines should be able to pick out only those websites or information that we were actually looking for.

And we should no longer have to sift through the tons of information that the computer gathers on its trawl through cyberspace.>>

Refugio
Local time: 12:50
Native speaker of:

English

3 days 10 hrs confidence:

we teach things to understand your language - does it sound normal? We train devices to react to your language

Explanation:
in the world of speech recognition, there are speaker-dependent (don't care what language) and speaker-independent. the second needs to be "trained" with the general sound of words in a language, and what variances to allow. trained devices then react to spoken commands (yes, without understanding in the strictest sense).

Michael Fratus
United States
Local time: 14:50
Specializes in field
Native speaker of:

English

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