Mobile phones in the future will translate languages in real-time, enabling people from around the world to understand each other—that is, if Google (NSDQ: GOOG) can figure out a way to do it.
The internet giant, turned mobile phone inventor, thinks it can make a fairly operational system within a couple of years, reports the UK’s Sunday Times. The process will meld together its text translation services on the computer with its voice-recognition technology on the mobile phone. The end product will likely be inundated with challenges, considering that both services are fairly buggy and inconsistent today.
“We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time,” said Google’s head of translation services Franz Och. “If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently.”
One reason the mobile phone may be more accurate is because typically only one person uses it. Over time, the technology could get a better feel for your accent and pitch, Och said.
The story did not go into how Google would make money from the services—both the text translation and voice recognition is free. As with both of those services, the accuracy seems to be just enough to get the job done. Whether that will be true with live conversations, who knows?