GOOGLE is developing software for the first phone capable of translating foreign languages almost instantly — like the Babel Fish in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
With the Nexus One, Google made voice commands an integral part of the phone’s user interface. In addition to voice searching — a feature on all Android phones — Nexus One users can also dictate e-mails, SMS messages, and use voice commands in Google Maps.
Google plans to make its Babel Fish a lot like a human translator; the software would analyze chunks of speech, and translate them in their entirety rather than translating word for word. Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services, said, “We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time.”
If anyone can pull it off, Google (and the NSA) can.
