Technology giant Google has unveiled its latest project on “speech-to-speech translator”. The software will permit real-time speech translation from one language into another, on the Google Android devices. The technology will incorporate a combination of text translation and voice recognition programs. Speech translators are famous in science fiction like universal translator from the Star Trek universe or the Babel Fish from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Google’s voice translator is currently in the lab to be perfected for a revolutionary intercultural communication and upon achieving success, it might announce the launch on Windows Mobile App as well. Our sources tell this software will be ready to roll by the year-end, until then we have to wait and watch.
Google’s “Babel Fish” translator will in never solve the language problem. Not only does it discriminate against anyone who cannot afford a mobile phone, but against minority language groups as well.
There are 6,800 languages worldwide, not fifty-two !
Moreover, if I met a native in Borneo, and he said to me in Hakka “I’ve lost my mobile phone” how would I understand him
And how many starving Africans can afford a mobile phone !
As English loses its economic power, the answer is not for us to move to Mandarin Chinese, but to Esperanto which puts all speakers on an equal footing.
Have a look at http://www.lernu.net or http://www.esperanto.net
There is always a positive and negative to every technology. For everyone that have access to it, it will improve communication in the business world, hopefully.