Google Working On Real-Time Language Translation Phone
Google has a history of removing language barriers, but the company hasn't yet made its web-based translation service especially easy to access or use from a mobile device. We knew that Toshiba was actually working on a translation phone, but now the same company responsible for Android and the Nexus One is apparently doing the same thing. Anyone want to guess how this will end?
According to a new report Google is hoping to have "a basic" translation system for mobiles in place within a couple of years, and it'll be far more advanced than some app where you still have to punch in a phrase or URL in order to get something translated. Basically the idea is to combine Google's voice recognition technology with its web-based translation service, so that the phone itself could recognize the language being spoken in real time and then "translating it into a synthetic equivalent in a foreign language."
If this works, you could theoretically speak to someone on the phone who doesn't speak your language. And you two could communicate in real-time. Something tells us the iPhone App Store won't be getting this right after Android, but who knows.
According to a new report Google is hoping to have "a basic" translation system for mobiles in place within a couple of years, and it'll be far more advanced than some app where you still have to punch in a phrase or URL in order to get something translated. Basically the idea is to combine Google's voice recognition technology with its web-based translation service, so that the phone itself could recognize the language being spoken in real time and then "translating it into a synthetic equivalent in a foreign language."
If this works, you could theoretically speak to someone on the phone who doesn't speak your language. And you two could communicate in real-time. Something tells us the iPhone App Store won't be getting this right after Android, but who knows.
