What is a finite state transducer?

Question

Can someone please tell me what a finite state transducer is?

I have read the Wikipedia article and don\'t understand a thing.

Answer 1

A finite state transducer essentially is a finite state automaton that works on two (or more) tapes. The most common way to think about transducers is as a kind of ``translating machine''. They read from one of the tapes and write onto the other. This, for instance, is a transducer that translates as into bs:

a:b at the arc means that in this transition the transducer reads a from the first tape and writes b onto the second.

Reference: Finite State Transducers