24 Aug 10 Do You Speak My Language?

As our global village gets smaller and smaller, one of the last great hurdles to cross, is that of multi-language communication. All you Star Trek geeks out there know what a universal translator is, and believe it or not, were not quite so far away from such a reality. It’s just a question of blending a few cool technologies that we already have. For those of you who don’t know what a universal translator is, it’s basically a little electronic device that allows Captain Kirk and all his peeps to communicate with all the aliens they meet on different planets audibly. Basically, you say something in English, and the non-english speaking aliens hear it in their own language and vice versa.

We already have translation software out there that works with the written word in a wide array of digital applications. While it hasn’t gained wide spread use, there is also speech recognition software out there that will transcribe words spoken into a microphone into a text document on your computer. I think it’s pretty obvious where this is going. By simply bridging the two technologies of speech recognition and language translation, you would have a universal translator. How simple that would be is of course open for discussion. But there are organizations that are working towards that end. Google, the US Army, and an Android app developer are just a few.