Post by Willow on Jul 26, 2013 14:05:55 GMT 9.5
THE rise of the mobile phone may have connected most of humanity, but many communications get lost in translation. That may be about to change.
Google has revealed plans to turn phones into "universal translators", allowing owners to speak into a device in one language, while the person they are calling hears it in their mother tongue.
The company says it is creating prototype devices that one day will allow travel to remote parts of the planet without having to worry about the language barrier. The devices would be akin to the "Babel fish" imagined by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Hugo Barra, a vice-president of Android, Google's software for mobile devices, said that its plan to create "real time" translation remained in the early stages. "We've got tons of prototypes of that sort of interaction," he said, "and I've played with it every other week to see how much progress we've made."
The technology may be several years away, but Mr Barra said that Google's system was "near-perfect for certain language pairs", such as between English and Portuguese.
Speech recognition remains a problem, although Google says that in controlled environments, such as a room with no background noise, its systems have "close to 100 per cent accuracy". However, if a person is near traffic, or using a phone with a poor microphone, glitches occur.
The company already provides a text translation system via its website. It provides a billion translations a day between 71 languages.
The mobile translation system is believed to be part of the Google Now project, which aims to "read your mind" with products able to anticipate users' needs. As your mobile lets Google know where you are, it can automatically send weather and traffic updates.
Critics have called these developments "creepy", but Mr Barra pointed out that the option could always be turned off.
Google has revealed plans to turn phones into "universal translators", allowing owners to speak into a device in one language, while the person they are calling hears it in their mother tongue.
The company says it is creating prototype devices that one day will allow travel to remote parts of the planet without having to worry about the language barrier. The devices would be akin to the "Babel fish" imagined by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Hugo Barra, a vice-president of Android, Google's software for mobile devices, said that its plan to create "real time" translation remained in the early stages. "We've got tons of prototypes of that sort of interaction," he said, "and I've played with it every other week to see how much progress we've made."
The technology may be several years away, but Mr Barra said that Google's system was "near-perfect for certain language pairs", such as between English and Portuguese.
Speech recognition remains a problem, although Google says that in controlled environments, such as a room with no background noise, its systems have "close to 100 per cent accuracy". However, if a person is near traffic, or using a phone with a poor microphone, glitches occur.
The company already provides a text translation system via its website. It provides a billion translations a day between 71 languages.
The mobile translation system is believed to be part of the Google Now project, which aims to "read your mind" with products able to anticipate users' needs. As your mobile lets Google know where you are, it can automatically send weather and traffic updates.
Critics have called these developments "creepy", but Mr Barra pointed out that the option could always be turned off.